Usually, the stock of work emails keep piling up, and then while searching something important, you have to skim through a lot of unwanted stuff. This is also the case with outlook, and it has to explore a lot of things to get you the desired result. Outlook stores all your data, including emails, contacts, calendars, in a PST file (personal folder file).
The outlook is one of the most popular email clients. It accounts for a total of about 38% of users (as of 2018), making it the single most used email exchange tool out there.
Most of them who use are working professionals, students, developers, and if you are one of them or anyone else who uses this in general, then you might want to know about the ways through which you can make Outlook work faster.
Now, the debateable part comes when you don’t want to send those unwanted as of now emails to the trash as they might come handy in the future. Maybe for reference purposes or when something goes wrong. Here’s what to do instead of deleting them.
Microsoft Outlook archive emails Old and make PST File Small
One way to maintain your inbox is to archive the old mails and keep them away from your Personal Folder (PST file). Here we show you the trick for Outlook versions 2007 and 2016.
1. Make PST file in Outlook 2007
For the Folks with Outlook 2007, on the menu, click File and go to Data File Management. Now, click on add and choose the appropriate format, also keep the Office outlook personal folder file (.pst) active and press ok.
Enter the file name you want to save for your folder; beware that at a later stage, you are making it an archive folder, so naming it with years a good convention unless you want to go by months or quarters because of the massive flow of emails. All you have to do is make sure that the file doesn’t exceed 1.5 or max 2GB mark as it makes everything inefficient.
Now that you have made a PST file let’s archive the emails into it.
2. Make PST FIle in Outlook 2016
If you use outlook 2016, here’s how to do it: In the file menu, look for the Info category and select Account Settings. Now switch to the Data Files Tab. Click Add and enter the name for your new PST folder.
In save as type, choose Outlook Data File, you can change this to something else as per your requirements. Also, to make sure of not crossing the 2GB mark, select the appropriate schema of names as of year, month, or in quarters.
There’s also an additional option to make it password protected with access protection where the password is required to extract emails out of the folder. If you don’t want this, then click Ok and close the menu.
3. Archive emails into a separate PST file in Outlook 2007 and 2016
Its time to fill the newly created archive pst. Here you can either drag and drop entire folders that show up under Mail Folders into the root folder. (Do this if you already have an archive folder of the specified duration, say one year/ month or a quarter).
It isn’t necessary to have that sort of thing ready, and you can also archive individual items. To do this, right-click on your archive folder under the Mail folder, and create a new folder here and name it appropriately.
Now in this folder, you add all the emails you want to archive with simple drag and drop. For just emails, keep Mail and Post Items as active selection for folder contains; if you wish to other items as well, then choose the suitable category.
For Outlook 2016, in order to move all the emails from a specific date, goto info category from the file menu and select cleanup tools. Here, choose archive and select the PST folder. Give the range of date under Archive items older than and click ok.
In outlook 2007, moving emails from the specific range is quite simple. Here, you directly select the archive option from the file menu. Give the desired range under Archive items older than: and also click on the browse button to load your newly created PST file and then finally click Ok.
After you’re done with archiving, right-click on the root folder of your archive PST and select Close to exit the pst file options.
4. Access archived emails from PST files (Outlook 2007 and 2016)
Now comes the part where you learn how to use the PST files to access all the archived emails you just created. For Outlook 2016, Select Open & Export under the file menu. Now choose the Outlook Data File.
In Outlook 2007, there’s an open option available directly under the file menu. Same as the newer version, you select the Outlook Data File. After this, just skim through the archive files and highlight the one from where you want to search the emails and click Ok. You can see your PST File right in the Mail Folder.
Conclusion
The Outlook PST files will help Outlook deliver the right performance to get things done. Do let us know in the comments section below if you face any issues while creating your PST files.