why documentary evidence is so very important, but it will only be available if you've retained that evidence. This paper will examine how we can retain that, possibly crucial, evidence and how a stringent retention policy will not only protect your business but also ensure that retention is not the mammoth task that it may at first seem. Email No-one likes having an overly full mailbox, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that users be required not to delete anything for a specific period of time. Instead emails can be exported from the mailbox for filing in one of the manners we'll discuss later. The easiest way to export an email from Microsoft Outlook is to open it and select File -&gt; Save As-&gt;Document Type HTML. See below for a guide to exporting emails from Google Mail. Your electronic working practices policy should specify the format of the filename, but the most practical is usually YYYYMMDD-Doctype_Description-Author.file\\... So an email sent 19 Jul 2011 about an outstanding order might be exported to 20110719_Email_Outstanding_order_from_su\\... This filename format ensures that all documents will be displayed in chronological order by default. If you send multiple emails that day simply append a number to the date, so 20110719 becomes 20110719_1_ etc. Traditional Documents The more traditional types of document might include notes from a conversation, quotes, invoices and reports. It's highly likely that you already opt to retain most of these, but again the filename is very important if you wish to be able