Outlook 2003: Using AutoArchive

Contributed by seamonkey420 October 29, 2006  
Tagged: Microsoft Outlook

If you’re like me, you probably get a ton of emails each day. After a while, it seems like your mailbox is gonna explode. Lets just use the autoarchive feature to archive your emails to a separate pst file.

Outlook 2003 has a nice autoarchiving feature that most do not use. I like to archive older emails to a separate personal folder (pst); the larger your mailbox in Outlook, the slower it will load.

Here’s a recipe on using autoarchiving.

1. Create a separate personal folder. File > New > Outlook Data File.. Then choose the type of storage (Office Outlook Personal Folders File).

Next, choose where you want to save the pst (i usually recommend in My Documents > create folder “Email Backup” ).

Then give it a name (this will be displayed in Outlook) and choose if you want add a password or not (recommended).

Once you click OK, you’ll see the personal folder file in your Folders.

2. Now we need to setup the Autoarchiving feature in Outlook.
Go to Tools > Options > Other tab > AutoArchive

You have several options here, they should be pretty straight forward. Be sure to set the archive folder to the one we just created. If you want to have this setting applied throughout your mailbox click the button.

If you do not want to have certain folders archived (tasks, calender, etc), you can right click on them in the Mail Folders pane, and choose Properties > AutoArchive tab. Just click the ‘Do not archive items in this folder’. Or if you want to use different settings, do so.

So there you go you, a cleaned up inbox that can be done automatically. You can also run AutoArchive manually by going to File > Archive… then be sure to change to “Archive all folders according to their AutoArchive settings”. Then OK.

As an alternative you could setup a rule to do this too.