I'd like to use sharpoint to save all email correspondence on a project. It is important to retain the orginal sender and sent date of the email with the item. I also want to use categories. I've tried using a discussion list and dragging an email from outlook into the list. It then shows me as the item sender, not the original sender. Is there a way to accomplish what I'm looking for?

Configure your document library to receive emails (Incoming email setting ,  Plz check this for how to configure incoming emails - http://gj80blogtech.blogspot.com/2009/12/configure-incoming-email-setting-in.html).

Then forward all your project emails to your document library email id , whenever u send any email always send a copy to doucment  library email id.

Is it necessary to do all this just to "save" the emails in the SharePoint library? I don't necessarily need an email address for the folder and providing one is apparently considered a security risk by some of our IT people.

Try to use Announcement list or a third party tool http://anurasoftware.com/default.aspx to enable incoming email for a custom list.

With Harmonie you can publish e-mail messages to SharePoint using a simple drag-and-drop operation from Outlook. E-mail headers are automatically saved as SharePoint document properties.

Jonas Martinsson

Product Manager, Harmonie

http://harmon.ie

From the document library's "Library toolbar", click the "Open with Explorer" icon. Then drag/drop email messages from Outlook directly into the Explorer window.

.

Here's an article desribing 5 out of the box ways to integrate Outlook and SharePoint to allow for saving email into SharePoint and also accessing email saved in SharePoint with pros and cons for each method.

http://camerondwyer.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/five-out-of-the-box-ways-to-get-email-into-sharepoint/

@CameronDwyer

For drag and drop of emails from Outlook to SharePoint we are using SharePoint Outlook Integration tool.  Emails and attachment can be saved in SharePoint with Meta data. 

• Edited by Alfred Carter Wednesday, December 25, 2013 11:48 PM

You can download Sharepoint Connect from Microsoft App Store. You can upload email and attachments to sharepoint from outlook

https://store.office.com/sharepoint-connect-WA104379267.aspx

Josh Ellise - http://redcedarstudio.com