To control archiving in Outlook, select Tools, Options, the “Other” tab, and click on AutoArchive:

You’ll see something like this:

The checkbox I’ve circled in red turns AutoArchive on or off. If you don’t want to AutoArchive (for example because it: is annoying, takes up processing power, or doesn’t save a copy of any of your emails) untick the checkbox.

If the checkbox is ticked, your emails will be archived.

The other checkbox is the one I’ve circled in blue. That one determines whether Outlook tells you when it is AutoArchiving or not. The main benefit of being told is that you can say, “Not right now” if you’re on a computationally challenged laptop and are already trying to get it to do stuff you need done.

Why Archive?

Mainly it is about moving old email out of the main Outlook .pst file so that Outlook has fewer things to look through when you ask it to find something. It also speeds up performance (a little) for other things too.

One benefit is that if your main Outlook file gets corrupted, you still have a chance that the email in your archive file is intact and readable.

What AutoArchive doesn’t do is save a copy of any of your email. If you lose email in Outlook (e.g. deleted and emptied, had a disk fail, reinstalled Outlook over your existing email) it is gone. It is always a good idea to backup important files and many emails contain crucial information so that means email too.

SaveMail Pro is a good tool (by us) for backing up Outlook email. With all the features it has now, I think you’d have a hard time finding one that is better value for money.

SaveMail Pro version 1.00.0045 was released last night and it has some really great features.

It still allows you to save your Outlook email as MSG files that you can load back into Outlook somewhere else. It still allows you to save emails as text files or emails as text files and attachments as normal files you can open in Windows Explorer.

However, this version adds two more fantastic features (I like them):

• You can save email folder names with the email.
  This means if you’ve organized all your email, it stays organized.
• It has ClickYes support built in.*
  This means no more having to “Allow access for XX minutes.”

The new output (with Folders and DIR turned on) looks like:

Pretty cool, eh?

* You have to install ClickYes for SaveMail to use it – but that’s easy because we’ve included it as an optional install.

The product is called “Express ClickYes”. It is free. It is tiny (31.5Kb). It means you never again have to press the “Allow” button to save your email.

When it is running, it looks like this:

What it does is press the “Allow” button for you, whenever the button appears. If saving your email takes too long (lots of email) it will press the button for you for as many times as needed to save your email.

It’s a really clever idea. Probably very simple, but very nicely done and ever so useful.

You can just run it and turn it on; but a better solution would be to turn it on when you run SaveMail and turn it off afterwards.

For the technically minded, the following VBScript works (save this as SaveMail.vbs and then double click it to run):

You can get a copy of “Express ClickYes” from ContextMagic.com.

We think this is brilliant as you can read your email virtually anywhere instead of only in the email program you used to download it. Isn’t that great!

The only drawback is space. The email programs make a big thing about how they compress email so you have it all but it doesn’t take up “any” space. They do a good job with this so they are right to brag about it. An uncompressed file does take up more space than a compressed one (generally).

However, you can have your cake and eat it too.

You can always compress individual emails, or a whole set of them, using any of the ZIP / compression tools. You can extract any part of any email anytime and anywhere. You can read any attachment on any computer that can read the attachment – you don’t have to have Outlook installed too.

It’s really easy.

Step 1. Choose the DIRectory output style. (Options, Output, DIR) like this:

Step 2. Choose which email folder to save and where to save the emails.

Step 3. Click Search to list the emails, then Save to save them.

Voila! You end up with something like this:

And in the attachments subdirectory, something like this:

Easy. Easy to use software tools. Because software should make your life easier.

SaveMail allows you to specify all of its parameters on the command line. It works like this:

[path\]SaveMail (Email-Folder) (Output-Directory) /autorun

For example:

C> cd \Program Files\GssEziSoft\SaveMail Pro
C> SaveMail_pro.exe “\\Personal Folders\Inbox” C:\Temp\ /autorun

You can also create a shortcut on your desktop or have the Windows Scheduler run it automatically. See Help – The Command Line; or the “How to automatically save your mail” article.

SaveMail has been tested with Microsoft Outlook 2003 and may also work with later versions (e.g. Outlook 2007).

We’re really excited about this new version as you can now save email in text format and save attachments as normal files. There is a new option “Output” which allows you to save your Microsoft Outlook email as MSG files, as TXT (text) files, or as DIRectories which contain the email message and any attachments.

We think it is a brilliant solution to saving your email in a totally portable way.

You can download it from http://www.gssezisoft.com.

Oh, yes, you can import it into your new computer. In some cases you can save it, convert it, and load it into another email program. But it is all very messy and sometimes the email programs just won’t allow you to transfer email between them. Ever been stuck with two (or more) email programs because you can’t get messages from the old system into the new one? I have.

And what is with all of the different email formats? How are you supposed to read your email if you don’t have that program on that computer?

Saving your email in a standard format such as text or HTML allows you to read it anywhere. You can take it with you. You don’t need a huge email program. You can use Notepad or a browser. You can read it on a Mac or on a Linux machine.

SaveMail can now save email as plain text files. If the email was in HTML format, it can save it as a HTML file.

You CAN have your email and read it too.

Most people agree that saving your email is a good thing to do. However, it seldom happens because, even if you’ve bought a program to do the work, one still has to run it. Let’s face it there are lots of things competing for our time these days and backups “probably” won’t be needed anyway. Until they are.

Our program, SaveMail by GssEziSoft, allows you to automatically save your email and here is how it is done.

SaveMail allows you to specify the e-mail folder to save and where to save it, when you start the program. It also allows you to run it automatically, without you having to click anything. There are a couple of ways you make the process fairly painless.

Using a Shortcut

If you know something about setting up shortcuts on your desktop you’ll find this quite straight forward. If not there is a real easy way later in this article (see Using a Batch File).

Right-click on the desktop and choose New Shortcut:

You’ll see the Create Shortcut window:

Click “Browse…”, locate the folder where SaveMail is installed (normally My Computer, Local Disk (C:), Program Files, Gss EziSoft, SaveMail Pro) and then select the SaveMail program (SaveMail_Pro.exe) like the following:

(You can also do this if you only have the Free edition: use SaveMail Free and SaveMail_Free.exe)

Click OK.

This closes the “Browse For Folder” window and puts the selected file in the “Create Shortcut” location box:

Click Next.

You will be asked for a name for your shortcut. I use “AutoSaveMail” but you can choose any name you like

Click “Finish”.

You have now created a shortcut that runs SaveMail BUT it still doesn’t automatically run anything. We need to make a couple of changes. Find the shortcut on the desktop that you just created. Right-click it and choose Properties:

You’ll see the “(shortcut name) Properties” window:

Click in the “Target” box, press the End key then the space bar and add the following to the end of the command:

"\\Personal Folders\Inbox" "C:\bkp\" /autorun


It should now look like:

Click OK.

Make sure you have a directory “C:\bkp” then try the shortcut (and click OK if Outlook asks).

You should see SaveMail doing its thing (assuming you have at least some mail in the Inbox)

Using a Batch File

Open Notepad (Start, Programs, Accessories, Notepad) and enter the following lines:


@echo off
set "i=\\Personal Folders\Inbox"
set "o=C:\bkp\"
"C:\Program Files\Gss EziSoft\SaveMail Pro\SaveMail_Pro.exe" "%i%" "%o%" /autorun


Click File, Save, choose the desktop and enter “AutoSaveMail.bat” (the quotes must be entered to stop Notepad adding .txt to the file name). It looks like:

Click save.

On the desktop, you should now see something like:

Make sure that you have a C:\bkp directory (Windows Explorer, My Computer, Drive C:, right click, New, Folder, bkp) and some email in your Inbox then double-click the desktop icon. Again, you should see SaveMail doing its thing. Again, if Outlook asks, tell it to let you save your e-mail.

The Easiest Way

Download this ZIP file and extract the contents (AutoSaveMail.bat) to your desktop. Then double-click AutoSaveMail.bat to save your email.

Introduction

This is written for Outlook 2003 but it should be similar for later versions of Outlook.

Why Archive

After you’ve gotten yourself on lots of email lists and collected lots of friends and joined lots of worthy causes you may find a lot of email arriving each day. If you are really good with email you’ll cope well with this and incomings will become “deleted”s and “filed”s as fast as they arrive. Over time you’ll have filed more and more useful and important stuff and you’ll have 10,000 emails (or more) all in one file.

Outlook no longer starts as quickly as it once did. Archiving can fix this.

One failure in your outlook file will mean the end of 10,000 emails (or more). Archiving can insure against this.

Some companies set rules on how big your email file can be. Have you reached the limit? Is your Outlook file too big? Archiving can solve this too.

Some of us are not as good at actioning all that arrives as it arrives. We have “do”, “delete” and “don’t know”. The “do”s and “delete”s are relatively easy; but the “don’t know”s are strewn throughout our Inbox. Eventually we can’t even find them (without a concerted look) and they may as well have been deleted even though they might have been important. Archiving can find all of those emails that you haven’t looked at for 30 days (and probably won’t look at
in the next 90 either) and file them away for you. You know you should have filed them. You would have filed them. But ….

Where to Archive

You need an archive file – a place to put all those old emails. In the days of paper we’d get a file cover or a box, write “Greg’s Stuff, Last year” on it and put it somewhere out of the way. We’re going to do the same electronically.

In Outlook, choose File, New, Outlook Data file

Unless you need to use the archive you are about to create with older versions of Outlook, choose “Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst)” and click “OK”.

In the dialog box that opens, choose a location for your archive file. This can be in the existing Outlook directory or you may choose to place it in a “backups” or “archive” directory; or even on another disk drive.

If Outlook fails there is a chance that it will corrupt your normal email file (Outlook.pst) and a chance that it will also corrupt your archive file. At least, if archived data is stored in a separate file, there is a good chance that a failure will NOT mess up anything in the archive. Of course, if Outlook is copying information to the archive at the time of crashing, it may mess up both.

There is also a chance that a disk crash will make a data file unreadable. If both of the outlook files are stored on the same disk then you could lose both files. If they are on separate disks then there is a good chance that even if a disk fails you’ll still have one of the files. Some email is often better than none (and a proper backup strategy can ensure that the amount lost is even less).

If your normal email is on drive C and if you have a drive D, I would
recommend putting your archive on drive D. Give it a name like
“Archive2009.pst” so you can recognize its purpose easily in future.
(“Archive2009″ is a much better name than “Greg’s Stuff, Last Year”.) Then click “OK”

The “Create Microsoft Personal Folders” window will appear. Type the file name into the “Name” part of the window. This is what your archive will be called within Outlook. The name you just entered was what it will be called by Windows Explorer. It is often best to use the same name in both (without the “.pst” in this window).

Select an encryption setting. I normally use “No encryption” as I don’t then have to remember passwords. However, in some environments you will need to choose one of the encrypted settings and enter a password.

If you do use encryption choose a password that you can remember (or file it somewhere secure). You can use, but don’t rely on, the Windows password list. If your computer fails or is the target of a virus there is a good chance that you are going to lose all of your passwords. You may need to reinstall Windows. You may be on a whole new computer. If the only copy of the password is in the old operating system, an archive of your email will do you no good at all.

After you have chosen the “Encryption Setting” and “Password” if required, click “OK”

You will see a new entry called “Archive2009″ in the “Navigation Pane” on the left. It looks like:

What to Archive

Okay, we have our archive file but there is nothing in it. We need to decide what things we are putting in the box. Don’t worry. It is not as tedious as it sounds. We used to have to go through all of the paper on our desk and decide: “Do I keep this out,” “Do I just bin this,” or “Does this go in the box for sometime later, maybe never?” Well, this is the computer age and the reason we got sold one in the first place was that they were supposed to make our lives easier. We’ll get it to do all that. We need to give it the rules and then it can do all the boring bits.

Which Outlook folders do you want it to go through? You mightn’t need it to touch “Inbox” if you are already coping with that yourself. Or, if you’re not, this might be one of the ones it really does need to do. What about “Sent Items”? Didn’t know you had a “Sent Items”? If that’s the case then you’ll definitely need to add that one to the list.

Don’t archive “Outbox”, “Junk E-mail” or “Deleted Items”. Things in the Outbox need to stay there until they’re sent and you really don’t want to keep the things you’ve already agreed to delete or that are almost certainly spam. “Just-in-case” clutters up an enormously large number of computers.

Do you have any other folders that you created specially? Do these fill up with email? Do you need all of them to be “instantly” accessible?

Alright, we’ve had a quick think about what to tell Outlook to do.

Right-click on one of the folders that you’ve decided should be archived and then click “Properties”

You’ll see the “(Folder) Properties” window:

Click on the “AutoArchive” tab. You’ll see:

For now, choose “Archive items in this folder using the default settings” then click “Default Archive Settings…”.

You’ll see:

Archiving works much better if you don’t have to think about it. If you leave it as a manual process it doesn’t happen on a lot of computers. I recommend ticking “Run AutoArchive”.

I also find that my life mostly revolves around a week so once a week tends to be a good time for me to run AutoArchive. If you are similar, use the arrow button to drop the number of days down to 7 or just type in 7.

“Prompt before AutoArchive runs” can be annoying as it tells you before starting each time. Still it only happens (for me) once a week so it isn’t that annoying. I leave this ticked but you don’t have to. If it gets sufficiently annoying come back to this step and turn it off.

The “Delete expired items” option is something I turn off. I’d rather have control over what is kept and what is deleted.

The “Archive or delete old items” option needs to be turned on (ticked). AutoArchive isn’t going to do anything, no matter how often it runs, if this isn’t ticked (unless you set a special archival policy for each folder you want to archive).

You next need to decide what Outlook should normally do with old items. You’re not locked in on this. You can choose to do different things for different folders but you it is easier if there is a “normal” thing you want it to do. The choices are really “Delete” or “Save” so it isn’t that hard. I figure if I’ve held on to it this long I must have thought it might be useful so I choose “Move old items to”.

You may want to argue that if you haven’t done anything with it for this long, you’re unlikely to do so at all. That would be a case for picking “Permanently delete old items”. It is up to you and, again, you’re not locked in.

If you chose “Move old items to” you need to select the “.pst” file that we set up. This will put the old emails in the “box” we created for them.

If you chose “… delete …” Outlook, of course, doesn’t need to know a “.pst” file.

Now you need to decide, “How long is too long?” If email has been sitting in Outlook for over a week, should it be cleared off the desk? Yes? No? What about after a month? What about after 3 months? Pick a timeframe and set that in “Clean out items older than.”

If you press “Apply these settings to all folders now” you will set an
archive policy for every folder; which is probably not what you want so don’t click it.

Click OK to go back to the “(Folder) Properties” “AutoArchive” tab.

Now, do you want this folder to use the default settings that you’ve just set? If so click “OK”. If not, chose “Archive this folder using these settings and set a special policy for just this folder. The choices are exactly the same as you have just chosen for the default settings and the same guidance applies.

Click “OK” to finish with the “(Folder) Properties” window.

Now you can set the Archival policy for the other folders that you are interested in. With any that use the default settings you can just select “Archive items in this folder using the default settings”. You don’t have to redo all of the default settings. You shouldn’t change the default settings either because, if you do, every folder that is “… using the default settings” will be changed. In some cases that will be what you want (in which case go for it) but in many cases that won’t be what you want. You seldom want to be changing the defaults whilst you are setting up the original archiving scheme.

Does it All Work?

You can wait for a week (or a fortnight or a month depending on what you set for “Run AutoArchive every”…. However, you can also try it out now.

The first step is to check that you have not told Outlook to delete anything that it obviously shouldn’t (like everything in the Inbox more than 0 days old). If you are really sure that the settings are what you want, proceed. Otherwise, it rarely hurts to back something up first. If you are unsure, backup your Outlook data.

Okay, in Outlook click File then Archive. You’ll see the “Archive” window:

Choose “Archive all folders according to their AutoArchive settings” and click OK. AutoArchiving will start and your “desk” (Outlook) will soon be clearer.

Is My Email Safe?

As covered at the start of this article, your email is safer than when it was all in one file. If you have a second disk drive and if you put your
archive file on it then you have an even better degree of protection.

However, whilst having “all your eggs in two baskets” offers a degree of protection, you are still better off having a copy of all of those “eggs” in another basket. This is why I recommend backing up your email.

The “SaveMail” program by
my business “GssEziSoft” is a good way of backing up your email. I can’t afford to lose a vital email. Can you?

This article is for people using Outlook. The examples given relate to Outlook 2003 but Outlook 2007 (and later) shouldn’t be too different.

Why?

There are many reasons to save your email. Sometimes computers crash irrecoverably. Sometimes they get replaced with new ones before they crash irrecoverably, and sometimes they get replaced anyway. In these cases you often end up with a new computer; and no email.

What if your email had all of your account and password details carefully saved within it? What if you’d just received a binding quote from a builder to do some work? (“How much did I agree to pay for this?”) What if your wife had emailed you a wish list for her birthday? Suffice to say you don’t need the crises that lost email brings ….

How Often?

Some businesses have triple redundant systems that you wouldn’t believe. Everything is copied to secondary (and tertiary) servers as it happens. Nothing can be lost. Yet even they do backups. You need to balance the costs with the benefits. If you save your email more often then it takes more effort on your part. If you save more often then there is less you will lose. It becomes a matter of “How much can I afford to lose?” and “How hard is it to save?” Pick something that works for you.

Weekly would be a good starting point. Use this or vary it up or down depending on your needs.

Where To?

Saving email on your computer does give some level of safety. If Outlook crashes and takes its data files with it, you’ll still have your saved copies. If you get an error on your hard disk(s) there is a chance that you’ll still be able to read the copies.

Having said all that, if you have two hard disks store the saved email on the other disk (typically drive D:). If you have a couple of computers connected in a home (or business) network, save your email on the other computer. If one totally dies you can still retrieve the information from the other one.

Alright, So How?

Using just Outlook, you can save your email in a number of different formats.

Click File, Import and Export

The “Import and Export Wizard” appears. Choose “Export to a file” and click “Next”

The “Export to a File” window appears. Choose “Personal Folder File (.pst)” and click “Next”.

You will see an “Export Personal Folders” window. Choose “Personal Folders”, check the “Include subfolders” option, and then click “Next”.

Outlook then asks you where to save your email. Click Browse to choose a location. Ideally this would be on another computer, on a USB external disk drive or, at least, on another disk in your computer. If you only have one disk saving a copy is still better than not saving your email. By default, Outlook chooses to call the file “backup” but you can use a different name if you like BUT keep the “.pst” on the end.

Some people add the date to the backup name (e.g. “backup2009-01-31.pst”). That way they can have multiple backup files which can be useful if you deleted an important email and only realized it was important after you’d backed up. (It’s still in the older backup.)

You can also use the same file again and again. Check “Do not export duplicate items” so that Outlook won’t add extra copies of emails already in that file.

Click “Finish”.

If this is a new file, you’re not finished yet even though you just clicked “Finish”

You will see a “Create Microsoft Personal Folders” window with a number of choices. My preference is to select “No encryption” as: it is more likely to be importable into something else; and I don’t have to choose and remember yet another password.

Choosing “Save this password …” is not going to do you any good if your computer dies and can’t remember anything it saved for you.

If you are more concerned about security than just safety you should choose one of the other choices. In that case, I would opt for “Compressible Encryption” as I prefer smaller files.

Once you’ve made your choice and entered a password if applicable, click “Ok”.

Very little appears to happen at this point but if you open Windows Explorer and look in the directory you chose, you will see your backup.

The Easier Way

If you have to do this every week then you’ll probably get very good at it; but it is a lot of work.

The SaveMail program from GssEziSoft allows you to save your email how you want, where you want, and when you want. It is free to try and easy to buy.