Today, email is a business standard. It has become as common in the work place as the phone that sits on your desk. If your email fails you can loose valuable business and information. By learning how to archive ms outlook messages you will have a separate store for all you old email messages.

Currently, Microsoft’s Outlook is the most popular email client. The two most common versions in use (at least for our clients) is Outlook 2003 and, more recently, Outlook 2007. Many people do not realise that this software has a finite limit on how many messages can be stored. With versions of Outlook before 2003, the amount of email that can be stored is two GB’s (Gigabytes). With the newer versions of Outlook (2003-2007), four GB’s of email can be stored. Once the critical limit is hit, Outlook will no longer open, and new mail will not be delivered.

It is actually a common occurrence that the critical limit is hit in Outlook. Many people do not delete any of their old messages, and have emails in Outlook dating back three or four years. In all actuality, most of these messages are very rarely referenced, if at all.

Now, what can be done to prevent Outlook from filling up and becoming unusable. Well, the first method would be to delete any emails that you no longer need. This can be a very time consuming process. Also, you may not want to delete very old emails for reference purposes. The second method would be to archive your old emails so it removes them from the main Outlook file, but still allows you to access them within Outlook. The steps to archive your old emails are discussed below.

1. Once within Outlook, click on the ‘File’ menu, and choose ‘Archive’
2. A new window will appear asking you which folder and subfolders you would like to archive. For most, choose the Personal Folder.



3. Then, still within the same window, choose a date that will act as a cut off date. All mail older than the date will be archived and all mail newer than the date will remain in your inbox and folders.
4. Then, click ‘OK’ and the archive process will begin. Depending on the number and size of of messages that you will be archiving, this process can take between a few minutes to a few hours.
5. After the archive process has completed, a new folder will appear in your Outlook. Its initial name will be ‘Archive Folders’. I recommend changing this to the year(s) of the emails that you just archived. To do this, right click on the folder, and choose ‘Properties for Archived’. In the new window that appears, click the ‘Advanced’ button, and then in the ‘Name’ field, give the folder a descriptive name, such as 2009 Archive.

I have found that it is best to do the archiving in stages. For example, if you have emails dating back to 2008, first follow the steps outlined above, and choose to archive all messages before 31/12/2008. This will move all of your 2008 emails to one archive folder. Then you can name that folder 2008 Archive. Next, follow the steps again and all messages before 31/12/2009, and all of your 2009 emails will be archived to the same folder. This is the easiest and most organized archiving method that we’ve come across.

As always Nash Computer Services is always here to help and support you. This guide was written more as an informative article rather than a pure step by step guide for you to complete this process by yourself. If you would like to archive your messages, please feel free to send us an email, and we will help you along the way.