Inside Outlook: Linking an Email to Abacus

If you have enabled the Abacus Outlook Add-In, an Abacus toolbar appears in the Mail viewer with two buttons: One to link emails and attachments to an Abacus name and/or matter, and a second to save only attachments as linked documents. These messages and documents will then appear in the Name/Matter window's Emails and Docs tabs.

Linking Emails to Abacus

When a message is linked, it is exported as a separate message file under the Abacus folder, and a record is created in the Abacus email database to control that message. From this point on, Abacus does not interact with the original message in Outlook, so you can move it or even delete it as desired. The lists of emails inside Abacus only work with these separate exported message files.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this feature is to share email messages and their attachments with other users on your network. Since each message that is linked to Abacus is copied to your shared network drive, you need to assume that anyone who has access to your network has access to these emails. Therefore, it is important that you have internal office guidelines as to what messages should be shared without violating anyone's sense of privacy, decorum, intellectual property, trade secrets, etc. Abacus cannot control or be responsible for unwanted access. That said, Abacus does attempt to enforce Privacy settings within the program.

  1. In Outlook's Inbox or other mail folder, highlight the email that you want to link to Abacus and click the Link to Abacus button on the Abacus Add-In toolbar. The Link to Abacus window appears.

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  2. Select the name and matter to link.

  3. For Gold users interested in billing for the email, in the Duration box, enter the number of hours to bill for the email. Then, check Bill for this record.

  4. Check Private if you want the email to be seen only by the operator who added it. Click here for more information about privacy.

  5. (optional) In the list of attachments, check the attachments you want to link as documents to Abacus.

  6. Click Link. The linked emails are listed on the Name/Matter window's Emails tab and the linked documents (if any) are listed on the Name/Matter window's Docs tab.

Linking Attachments Only

  1. In Outlook, highlight a message that has attachments, and click the Save Attachments button on the Abacus Add-In toolbar. The Link to Abacus window appears.

  2. Select the name and matter to link.

  3. For billing purposes, enter the number of hours to bill for the document.

  4. In the list of attachments, check the attachments you want to link as documents to Abacus. You can right-click inside the list of attachments and then click:

    1. View attachment to view the highlighted attachment in a separate window.

    2. Show all attachments to list all attachments in the email. By default, the list of attachments shows only files attached to the email. Sometimes, there are other in-line items embedded in an email, such as headers, logos and images. Showing all attachments will list all attachments including in-line items.

    3. Hide in-line attachments to list only the files attached to the email. This will hide any in-line items embedded in the email such as headers, logos, and images.

  5. Click Link. The linked files are listed on the Name/Matter window's Docs tab. They are also saved to the Docs folder under Abacus in a subfolder named from the matter's file/case number.

Sending Emails

Whenever you send a message from Outlook, you are prompted with the same Link to Abacus window to link that email to a name or matter. Note that if you start a message from within Abacus, the message already knows what records it is linked to and you are not prompted again.