If you’ve been using Outlook for some time, you’ve probably got a folder structure that works for you. And you probably also have a lot of email that could be archived out of your mail storage file.
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s all-or-nothing solution to the issue – AutoArchiving – is quite limited. You can only archive items by their date. You can’t, for instance, tell Outlook to archive all 6 month old emails except categorized ones. Nor can you tell Outlook to archive all emails except this or that folder. You could always copy emails to a new data file manually, but that would mean recreating the folder structure, which can be a lot of work.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could replicate your folder structure in a new data file, and move older emails to it as needed?
You can, and it’s a simple, if drawn out, process:
1) Open Outlook and click “File” > “Import and Export”.
2) Choose “Export to a file”, and then click “Next”.
3) Choose “Personal Folder File (.pst)”, and then click Next.
4) On the next screen, select the top of the hierarchy (usually listed as “Personal Folders”) and make sure that “Include subfolders” is checked, and then click “Next”.
5) Choose a unique name for the new data file (such as “outlookfolders.pst”) as well as a location for the new data file (such as the desktop), and then click “Finish”.
6) If you see an additional screen called “Create Microsoft Personal Folders”, just click “OK”.
Depending on the size of your email archive and the speed of your computer, this process can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 45 minutes or more.
Continue reading “Copying Outlook’s Folder Structure”