In this article we will discuss the setups needed to properly archive mailboxes in Microsoft Outlook.
When a mailbox in Outlook is created and email is added to it, gets larger and larger as time goes by. It is important to know that certain versions of Microsoft Exchange have limitations on the total size for mailboxes (sometimes these are set by your network administrator). When your mailbox reaches its size limit, you’ll want to “pull”, or archive your email to remove it from the server to reduce your mailbox size.
Archiving your Outlook email removes older items from your mailbox and safely stores them away in a file, called a PST file. The PST file can be reattached to your Microsoft Outlook software so you can still view your old email.
To manually archive your old Outlook items:
- Open Outlook
- In Outlook 2003/2007, choose File -> Archive
- In Outlook 2010, choose the File tab, select Cleanup Tools, and select Archive
- Choose the folder you’d like to archive. For example, to just clean out your old email, you’ll probably want to select your Inbox here.
- Click the Browse button to choose a location to save a PST file (this is where your archived items will be saved). You should choose a location that is backed up regularly in this step. A common mistake we see is that users choose the default (stored on your local computer) and this is not typically backed up. You’ll want to choose a location that you know gets backed up.
- Click OK.
- After you archive, you’ll notice a new item in your Outlook list called “Archives”. Your archived items will be stored in this file.
We typically suggest that users incorporate this into their yearly “housekeeping” procedure and perform a manual archive at least once a year to keep your Exchange mailbox sizes down.
