Follow up to my previous post regarding Outlook data file management, I received a couple of comments which prompted me to elaborate more on this. A few notes here regarding this information: the menu options referred to are consistent with Outlook XP/2003 (and probably are very similar with previous/future versions) and this information does not apply to Outlook Express.

When creating archives through File > Archive (you might have to “expand” the menu to see this option) you can configure the archive file to use. If you specify a file which doesn’t exist, Outlook will create it on the fly. Usually this file is called archive.pst and is stored in the same Windows folder as your outlook.pst file.

If you don’t want to deal with the “arduous” task of having to manually archive you old messages, you can configure the Tools > Options > Other (tab) > AutoArchive feature. This feature is pretty intuitive, so there really isn’t much to it. One thing to note is you can specify the file to use for your auto-archives and this can be different than your manual archive settings. Generally, these two files should be the same for the sake of consistency.

To create a backup of your data files, the process is quite simple:

1. Go to the location of your data files (usually it is C:\Doc and Settings\[your Windows user name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook).
2. If Outlook is open, close it.
3. Copy all the PST files to a backup location.
4. Compress (zip up) the backup files to save space. 

To restore the backup, simply overwrite the exist files with your backup copies (while Outlook is closed).