Auto-Archiving

Outlook 2002

Auto-archiving helps to keep your mailbox size under the 100 megabyte limit without discarding mail you may need.

About Archive and Auto-Archive with Outlook 2002

Your Exchange mailbox grows as items are created in the same way that papers pile up on your desk.  In the paper-based world, you can occasionally shuffle through your documents and store those that are important but not frequently used.  Documents that are less important, such as newspapers and magazines, you can discard based on their age. You can quickly complete the same process in Outlook.  

You can manually transfer old items to a storage file by selecting the folder from the Folder List you wish to archive, then clicking File, Archive, or you can have old items automatically transferred by using Auto-Archive.  Items are considered old when they reach the age you specify.  With Auto-Archive, you can either delete or move old items.  UNH Exchange administrators recommend Auto-Archive, as it continually monitors your Exchange mailbox, (on the Exchange Server), to move older mail to your archive file.  In contrast, using the Export utility to export mail to a Personal Folder does not delete it from your mailbox.

Auto-Archive is a three-step process.  

Step 1:

First, you turn on Auto-Archive.  On the Tools menu, click Options. 

Screen 1

Click the Other tab, and then click the Auto-Archive button.
Screen 2

Specify how often you want to Auto-Archive.  UNH Exchange administrators recommend that you name the default archive file archive.pst.  If you save files to a file server, we recommend that you choose that location.  (BSC staff should enter H:\archive.pst)

Screen 3

Step 2:

Now that you have turned on the auto-archiving tool, it is time to set the Auto-Archive properties for each of the folders that you want to automatically archive.  

Note:  By default, the basic Outlook folders have Auto-Archiving settings already specified once you turn on the Auto-Archiving tool.  You can change these later if you wish. These folders and their default aging periods are:

• Calendar (6 months), 
• Tasks (6 months), 
• Journal (6 months), 
• Sent Items (2 months), and 
• Deleted Items (2 months). 

Inbox, Notes, Contacts, and Drafts do not have Auto-Archive activated automatically. 

To set up Auto-Archiving on individual folders, highlight the folder you want to Auto-Archive, right-click, select Properties.

Screen 4

Click the Auto-Archive tab.  To have the individual folder Auto-Archive with the default settings you created in step one, select Archive this folder using the default settings, then click OK.  (see screen 5a)
Screen 5a

Conversely, you can also have this individual folder Auto-Archive with different settings than the default.  To do so, select Archive this folder using these settings, input your desired location and time frame, then click OK, (see screen 5B).
Screen 5b

If you checked ‘Prompt before Auto-archive’ in screen 3 above, you will be prompted (see below) when it is time to auto-archive.  Once archiving begins, messages will appear in the lower right corner of your Outlook window.

 

Screen 6
Screen 7

When you archive, your existing folder structure is maintained in your new archive file.  If there is a parent folder above the folder you chose to archive, the parent folder is created in the archive file, but items within the parent folder are not archived.  In this way, an identical folder structure exists between the archive file and your mailbox.  Folders are left in place after being archived, even if they are empty.

Step 3:

Retrieving archived items You can retrieve items from an archive file either by importing the archive file or by opening the archive file. UNH Exchange administrators recommend that you OPEN the file rather than import it.  If you import the archive file, you move all the archived items back into your mailbox, into the folders from which they were archived, increasing the size of your mailbox. You can also choose to import the archived items into a new folder.  If you open the archive folder, it is added to your folder list, and you can access all of your archived mail from this folder.  You can also manually copy items into appropriate folders in your mailbox if you need them back there.  To open your archived mail, click File, Open, Personal Files Folder (.pst), and select the file that you saved your archived mail in Screen 3.  

When you continually archive your Outlook folders to .pst files, you must make sure that it does not exceed 2GB in size.  If the size of the file approaches 2GB, click here.