The following article was prepared by Mike Taylor, C.P.M., for distribution to ISM affiliate newsletters
Many of us have a nasty habit of saving lots of email messages in personal archive folders. After all, it’s only a few electrons, right? Wrong! After a whole year of saving, a few hundred email messages can take up a lot of space.
Outlook is unforgiving. At some point the archive folder will get so big that Outlook will refuse to open it – and it may be permanently corrupted – and it may be that you can never open it again.
Rather than take the risk, I proactively manage my archive folders. (incidentally, Outlook also calls them Outlook Data files and/or Personal Folders (PST) files).
Here’s what I suggest:
1- Organize your archive folder just like you would a file cabinet. Set up a
separate folder for special or unique topics – don’t just dump everything into
one big pile
2- Set up a special place on your hard drive to store all of your Outlook Data
files and then force Outlook to put new files in one place. I have a folder in
My Documents called MAIL (imagine that)
a. By putting all the Outlook Data files in one place you can find them in the
morning. Trust me – you do not, DO NOT want to let Outlook set up new Outlook
Data files in the default location. You will regret it if you do.
3- Set up as many Outlook Data Files in the Mail folder as you want and then
open, close, copy, backup or share each of them whenever you want to.
4- Do a minor amount of housekeeping at the beginning of each year. I close last
year’s archive folder and start a new one. That way to avoid pilling too much
stuff into the old one.
5- Another benefit of organizing messages into smaller Outlook Data files is the
ability to backup the files to a CD. If you wait to start a new file until it is
too big it limits your backup and recovery options.
Here’s an example of how I handle this subject:
1- On my hard drive I have a special folder that I
set up, named MAIL. I Always put any new Outlook archive folders into that one
folder. DO NOT let Outlook put them where it wants to by default – trust me you
will regret it someday.
2- In my MAIL folder I have many Outlook Data files (you can have as many as you
want). Example, I have Outlook Data files called: SentFY06, SentFY05, Legal,
Training, etc. When I want information from one of the old archives, I connect
to it, find the email and then disconnect.
3- For very active archives, I set up a new file at the beginning of each year.
So this week I have created a new file called SentFY07 and started to use it for
new messages. That way I avoid piling too many messages into one file and
risking a crash.
4- One other trick is to use Outlook rules to automatically copy messages to the
archive. As you can guess, I have a rule that copies sent messages to my archive
and I have now changed the rule to start copying to the SentFY07 file.
Have I convinced you that it’s time to start getting organized? No? Well think about this, 1) once the file crashes, it’s too late; 2) waiting until the file is huge to start organizing means you’ll have to copy everything to new folders – you can’t just do it a little bit.
O.K.- here’s how:
1) Open My Computer and create a MAIL folder where
it can be found – in My Documents.
2) Open Outlook and set up some new Outlook Data files by topic, year, program
contract or …?
3) FILE MENU > NEW > OUTLOOK DATA FILE
4) In the Create File Dialog Box, carefully select the new MAIL folder
5) At the same time give a new file an intelligent name such as SentFY07.
Outlook will ad the pst extension for you – you don’t need to say it.
6 When you click OK you will be taken back to Outlook and into a window called
Create Microsoft Personal Folder. Now give it the SAME name you just gave the
file and select OK.
7) The new Outlook Data file will show up on your Outlook folder list. If it
shows up with a name like “personal folder” then you forgot to name it in the
last dialog box – Do it again.
8) Drag and drop messages into your new archive and when you are ready to close
it – right click on the folder and select close.
9) If you want to open an Outlook Data file, on the FILE MENU select OPEN >
Outlook Data file, then browse to the MAIL folder and open it.
Sounds complicated – but it’s not. In fact Outlook
has some every good instructions on how to do it. Use the Help menu and search
for Data File.
Mike Taylor
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