You can archive your old emails in Microsoft Outlook. This will help you keep a better overview and organize yourself and your mailbox better.
Archiving Outlook emails: mailbox organization is important
If your Outlook inbox fills up with lots of new emails every day, it's important to organize it properly to keep track of everything. Older emails can be stored in an archive.
- Before you archive your old emails, you should consider which system you want to use to store them. For example, you can sort them by date (months or years), subject (bills, personal information, etc.) or sender.
- The latter is better in many cases, as you can usually find the emails you are looking for more quickly. So create folders for different topics in advance and sort your emails in (and out).
- Once you have sorted the emails you want to keep, you can move them to the archive, which is a separate Outlook data file (PST) that you can open in Outlook.
Archiving emails in Outlook
By default, Outlook uses AutoArchive, which archives emails regularly and without your intervention. However, you can also archive your emails manually at any time. To do so, follow these steps:
- In Outlook, go to file > Info > Tools > Clean up old elements.
- If you click on this, a window opens in which you can make the most important settings – for example, which folders should be archived from which date. Click on Archive this folder and all subfolders.
- Select the folder you want to archive. There, under Archive items older than an appropriate date.
- Check the box Even items for which “No AutoArchive” is enabledso that you can archive individual items that are not affected by automatic archiving.
- Confirm with OK. Now the emails you selected will be saved in a PST file.