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Can you please tell me how to back up all deleted and sent messages and all e-mail addresses that are in my e-mail. - Roger, via e-mail

What we are talking about here is folders. Once you've started using e-mail and given your address to a few friends, and maybe signed up for a couple of e-mailed newsletters, it is amazing how quickly your inbox grows. This is where email management comes in.

Just as you might organise your regular mail into bills, personal and business, you can organise your e-mails into different folders. As well as having similar folders as those you would use for paper mail, you can also have very useful ones such as having a copy of every e-mail you send - which can be vital if you need to recall exactly what you have sent - and deleted e-mails - it is so easy to delete something by mistake. You can arrange for the deleted folder to empty on closing down your e-mail, or to hold onto them indefinitely.

While this may sound daunting, it is as easy as putting your text documents into folders. The various e-mail services all have slightly different methods of creating folders, but there will generally be an option to choose "New Folder" or something similar in the file menu. The "copy self" option for sent mail can usually be set up by going into tools, then options and then message settings.

Many e-mail services will allow you to create subfolders within the folders. This may be useful to, for example, save emails from specific people or companies. Moving e-mails from the inbox to a particular folder is generally as simple as clicking a button named "move" and then picking the relevant file.

It might be useful to save attachments to your computer's hard drive rather than within your e-mail in order to save space. You should also remember to clear out your folders every so often. When messages are not in the inbox it can be easy to forget that they are taking up space which is normally limited.

Setting up an e-mail address book within your server is easy and useful. Some e-mail systems offer a list of recently used addresses by clicking on a question mark on a new message, but all offer a method of saving them.

You can create an address book by clicking on the address option and following on from there. Most of these services allow you to hold information such as phone number and postal address as well as e-mail.

Also very useful when looking at the address book is to use the distribution list option if your email supports it. This allows you to send e-mails to several addresses just by clicking on one button.