Archive Emails and Folder Items in MS Outlook

MS Outlook stores, the mails, contacts, tasks, events, notes and all other mail items in a PST file. When large numbers of mail-items are collected together, you can archive the old ones that are not needed very often. The archived mail-items do not appear in the item list of MS Outlook. 

User can restore and access archived items when needed. Archiving can rescue you from size limit problem of PST files. Current or active items (a task that is yet to complete) of MS Outlook can’t be archived. We will discuss manual methods to archive, copy items from an archive and move items from an archive.

Copy all items from an archived location:

• If you want to copy all the archived items, follow underlying steps.
•   Run MS Outlook.
• On the File menu, click Import and Export option. Import and Export wizard is displayed.
•  Select Import from another program or file option. Click Next.
•  Click Personal Folder File (.pst). Archived files are created by default at  C:\Documents and Settings\
• Under Options, choose Allow duplicates to be created option. Click Next.
• Select the folder and select the Include sub-folders option.
• Select the destination as per required.
• Select Import items into the current folder to import the data into current folder.
• Select Import items into the same folder in to import the data into destination folder that has same name as that of the source folder.
• Click Finish.

    Note : 

 If there is some error issue again, it may be due to size limit problem. If you get the error message "the .pst is already in use," reduce the size of the file or repair it for error. You can try Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe) to fix these issues.

Move Specific Items from Archive:

If you don’t want to move all items from an archive, MS Outlook allows you to move specific mail-items from the file to Outlook. To move individual items, follow these steps.

• Run MS Outlook.
• On the Go menu, click the Folder List. Click the folder that contains the archived items.
• Select the sub-folder that contains the items that are to be moved.
• Select the items to be moved, and then drag and drop them to original folder in the Folder List.

Note: Above drag and drop method is a very useful method to move individual items to selected folders. 

Automated Method of Archives in MS Outlook:

However, Splitting operation can be performed via ‘Archive feature’ in Outlook. But, it has certain limitations like creation of new PST folder, no affect on original PST size and time consuming. It also bounds the user to perform compacting operation afterward archive process.

In automated PST splitting mechanism, user has following facilities mentioned below:

•  Initiate operation on duplicate copy of PST files
• Breaks heavy PST file into smaller chunks
•  Protect Outlook emails from over-sized corruption
• Option to split emails on different criteria( Date, Email Id, Folder)
• Save output at user’s specified location
• 100% safe for data integrity

Reference:

http://www.softwarereviewboffin.com/email-software/stellar-phoenix-pst-file-splitter-review.html