Follow the rules and hope they did their homework (Score 1)

This is in one of my areas of practice and you raise a valid point. As a beginning: 1) 6 months seems a bit short for all emails. 2) If your company is smart enough to control PSTs, then it is possible the email is being archived according to a valid records retention schedule or they really have other legitimate reasons for taking an aggressive approach to email deletion. On the other hand, simply leaving it up to employees to convert "important emails" into word documents would not likely protect them in court as a clear-cut and reasonable policy that was consistently enforced company-wide. Nobody has given you a clear-cut best practices because it doesn't exist otherwise you could probably buy it at Walmart or at least find a reasonable download. This is because every organization's policy must be reasonable considering the legal, business and technology that is available to them in their particular industry. So different industries have different standards and rules to follow. The worst flaw in your company's Email Retention Policy, as you describe it, is what happens when a government or official investigation is started, or a lawsuit is brought by or against your company? Now a legal hold must be placed on the email...and your word documents so nothing can be deleted or altered....wonder if they will have the storage space and tools necessary to deal with holding all potentially discoverable emails for 3-5 years...instead of 6 months???