WebGuru’s Blog about Digital Life

Last Friday, I spent half of my day on helping my friend to clean up its Outlook files. The main reason was that he kept all his emails since day one and the mail box was too huge to accept any new incoming emails (not sure the limitation on PST file from Microsoft is now still 2GB or not). I understand the importance of archiving correspondences between clients and my friend, so my strategy was to split all emails into a few PST (Personal Folders File) files which would be under the size limitation. And at the meanwhile, I set up an auto archive mechanism to move old emails to other pst file in the future automatically.

I know I was supposed to send him a detail instructions on how to do such things as my promised. But I could not get close to the computer during my busy weekend. So I am publishing all my steps here today, for him it will be a instruction via URL; and for all of you (include myself), a future reference post.

1) Check Data Files

First, you will have to make sure what kind of data file you are using now. Remember, my friend and I are using Microsoft Outlook 2003 and all screen shots in this post are for Outlook 2003. Please use your own imagination if you use Outlook 2007.

1. Click the File top menu item, and then Data File Management… option.
2. On the Data File dialog window, you will see a couple of files your outlook is currently using.
3. Click Settings button on the right to view details of the data file, like comments and others. Or click Open Folder to locate the physical file path of this data file in case you need to copy or move this file. (But please remember to shut down your Outlook first to do so).

2) Create new Outlook PST Data File

After looking at the current data file, you will have an idea how your email data stores and which data file hosts which emails. Now you need to create more new data file to host your emails if you main data file became too huge.

1. To create a new psd data file, just click Add… button while you are still on the Outlook Data Files window. 
   
2. On the Type of Storage, select Office Outlook Personal Folders File(.pst).
    
3. Next screen, choose a very good place to store your new file. Suggestion: if it is for important emails, please put it on some folders you regularly back-up like the Windows File Servers. And please use some meaningful file names like year-month-emailboxname.pst instead of the default generic outlook(1).pst file name. Because later on you will get more and more similar data files created, and a meaningful name will be helpful down the road.
4. The same suggestion to the next screen. Before you move on, please change the Name first: DO NOT USE PERSONAL FOLDERS for all of your other data files. In such way, you will make yourself a mess trouble. A nice renaming, like Achieved 2008 Emails will be much better. 

    

5. Except the name, you can accept all other default values and click OK button to confirm. As you can see, your new data file will show in the list of data files on next screen with the Name you just created.

After a new data file has been created, you can close the Data Files Management consol to back to the Outlook itself. Now let us do some hard working on moving.

We need to move old emails from the main personal folders to the new data file. By the way, how can you tell which data file is being used as the main data file to accept new emails? To make sure, you can click the top menu item Tools –> Email Accounts option, and select the default View or change existing email accounts option and click Next button to the next screen.

Now you will appreciate how you name your data file differently since the first name in the drop down of Deliver new e-mail to the following location: should be the data file accepts new emails.

After you figure out the main data file and new data file, what you can do is to drag and drop old files to the new data file. In Outlook, the Data File appears as Folders in your All Mail Folders section. If you are familiar with regular folder file transfer, emails moving should be no problem to you. But if you do not feel confidence on the drag and drop thing (like myself, I sometime drop files to wrong folders), I can advise you a better way to manually move emails.

Highlight all emails you need to move, then right click your mouse, and select Move to Folders… option, on the next screen just choose the destination folder for these emails. This way can 99% chance to prevent the wrong dropping mistake.

Believe me, if you have a huge mailbox needs to split into different data files, the moving time would not be too quick, so now you can take a long coffee break or re-schedule to do so before you leave the office.

4) Set up AutoArchiver

Finally, supposedly you take care of your old emails by organizing into yearly new data files, then let us talk about the organizing of new emails. I guess now you would not want the manually moving any more, so how about some automatically jobs?

OK, ready? Set, go!

Click Tools –> Options from the top menu items, and on the Options window, click Other tab and click AutoArchive button in the middle. On the following screen, check Run AutoArchive every xx days option, and During AutoArchive: Archive or delete old items. At the meantime, if you want to view old emails all the time, you need to check Show archive folder in folder list option as well.

in the Default folder settings for archiving section, you can update months to purge the old emails to reduce spaces in the main data file. And of course, you can Move old items to a particular data file as I described above. Now, my trick is to put a new file name in that field and let the Outlook automatically create this data file for you.

In this way, what you need to do is from time to time to update the Move old items to file name to create another archived data files. For example, on January 1st 2008, I can name a 2007-2.pst here to archive all my old emails from the second half year of 2007 (Suppose I set up the clean out items older than 6 months). And then wait till July 1st 2008, I can do the same to put another new file name as 2008-01.pst to archive my first 6 months of 2008 emails.

If everything goes well, you do not need to manually archive old emails any more!

Additional notes:

If your main mail box data file is still in huge size after you move all the old emails, it might be time to compact the data file. As my knowledge, deleting email items in data files sometimes does not mean release all file spaces in data file automatically.

To do so, just follow the step of 1) Check Data Files to bring the Outlook Data Files windows, and select the main data file and click Settings to the detail of Personal Folders dialog window. From there, simply click the  Compact Now button to reduce your data file size (be aware: large data file will take long time to complete the compacting process).