Outlook backup is a free piece of add-in software that is not included in Microsoft Outlook for one reason or another, but this can easily be downloaded from the link at the bottom of the page.

What does Outlook backup actually do?
It enables us to backup our emails which are stored in a personal folder or PST by creating a copy of our original personal folder, the idea behind this being that the backup is stored in a different location, and if the original cannot be accessed then we can easily begin to use the backup in its place.

How to Backup Microsoft Outlook
firstly download and run the backup tool from the link at the bottom of the page, this will then install the add-in to Outlook.

Once installed launch Outlook, under the file menu you should now have a Backup Option, (if not checkout our troubleshooting section below) Select the Backup option, and select the Options button and you’ll see the following.

Select the Personal Folders you wish to backup and now select Browse to change the default backup location, it generally points to a location on the C: drive, but it’s important to change this  to an alternative location, (if you’re looking for a cheap backup device, checkout our Network hard drive page)

Once finished select Save Backup, this will then prepare to run a backup the next time you exit outlook, now bear in mind, if you have a large mailbox this means the PST file will be large, and depending the speed your backup will run at this may take quite a while for this first backup.

Notes..
Make sure your PST files are not larger than 15GB or they will be slow, and can become unstable and corrupt easily.

To check the size of your PST or Mailbox from Outlook Right Click on Personal Folders and select Folder Size. If the size is around or over 1GB then you can simply create another PST/Personal folder. File Menu >  Data File Management.

Troubleshooting
I cannot see the backup Outlook tool from the Outlook File menu.
This happens when the file outback.dll is not registered correctly, to correct this firstly re-run the install, if unsuccessful run the following from the Start > Run menu
regsvr32 “c:\program files\microsoft office\office\addins\outbak.dll”

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The backup tool can be downloaded from microsoft.com

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