Microsoft Outlook Archiving How to Guide

Ever not been able to find an email? If so maybe it’s been archived, generally the default setting will archive anything older than 6 months.

To find your Outlook archives
Right click on your Inbox and select Properties – AutoArchive tab – Now you will be able to see any Archive settings.

As you can see the Inbox here is set to be archived every 14 days archiving any emails older than 6 months.

From here you can disable, enable and change the settings for any Outlook archives.
 

One point worth noting is the default archive location, it’s pretty long winded and if you want to backup your email archive its worth knowing where it’s located.

C:\Documents and Settings\*profile*name*\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\archive.pst

(If using Windows Vista or 7 the start of the path is C:\Users)

Viewing your Outlook Archives
An Outlook archive is simply just a personal folder that as a default is not set to be viewed within Outlook, this however can simply be changed by going to the File menu – Data file management – Selecting Add then you need to browse to the location of the Archive as above, now you will be able to see it as a personal folder.

Setting up Microsoft Outlook Archiving
a) Setup your chosen archive settings (Tools – Options – Other tab – AutoArchive – choose your settings and select OK-OK to close Windows)
b) Right click on any folder you wish to Archive – such as Inbox, or Sent items etc – Select Properties – AutoArchive and then ensure this adheres to your chosen archive settings.
c) Your archiving is now in place, you can either wait for archiving to begin by itself or you can force it by going to the File menu and selecting Archive.

Troubleshooting

Archiving fails to begin

ˇ         Try to force archiving manually by selecting Archive from the file menu, if this works then check the AutoArchive settings its enabled, and there are files within the specified time frame.

ˇ         Ensure that your hard drive has adequate disk space.

ˇ         The archive PST file may be corrupt, running a PST scan should help, more here on repairing PST files.

ˇ         Older type PST files which are ANSI format have a size limit of 2gb, newer ones which are UNICODE have a much greater size limit of 20gb, if you find the file size around 2gb and you cannot exceed this you may need to create a new archive.

This problem generally occurs when the PST was originally created using an older version of Outlook that did not support UNICODE PST files

For more on Microsoft Outlook archiving

Corrupt PST/Personal Folder? Find out how to scan and fix problems

Did you know that you can protect personal folders with a password? But what happens if you forget the password? Read our article on PST password recovery

Microsoft Outlook not opening or crashing? Find out what can cause this and more importantly how to fix it.

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