In large companies there is an ongoing effort to prevent the storage of emails for the reasons mentioned by spudzeppilin. Since you are in a position to dictate how users create email, you have a great opportunity. My suggestion would be to simply forbid attachment of enclosures. This is simple to enforce, just configure your mail delivery system to remove them. This will solve a large number of problems relating to viruses and file size. It will enable you to easily store years of traffic in reasonably sized text files.

If users really have a need to communicate with large files, just have them send a URL which links the information. This elimates duplication of large files and results in the creation of a truly collaborative work environment.

Plain text is easy to search. If you need fast search capability then you can create a concordance of the text files and a web interface for easy access. This would allow you to search everyone's email for any words in a very quick user interface.

Typically, only a few email addresses need to have these resrictions. Rather than burdening all the users with all these rules, it is easier to just enforce the rules at a special email address such as 'archive@dept.company.com'. Email sent to this address is archived and indexed. This also solves the business/personal problem, since only business mail will be sent to the archive address.

If users really want graphics, see if figlet can meet their needs.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma