If you would like to have outlook automatically archive your older emails, save space in your inbox or improve the performance of your Outlook, follow the below steps.
Please Note - If you need assistance with setting up archiving, Hosting Australia support has a flat rate fee of $50 to do this via remote support for you. Please contact support@hosting-australia.com for further information.
Set Default Auto Archive Settings.
The below steps will set the default Auto Archive settings. This will apply to each folder in your mailbox unless you choose to specifically define settings per folder, see the section further on in this KB Article.
- Open Outlook as you normally would
- Click the File tab, generally found in the top left-hand corner of Outlook.
- Click Options.
- Click Advanced, see point 1 below. Then under the auto AutoArchive category, click AutoArchive Settings, point 2 below..
- Select the "Run AutoArchive every" days check box, see point 1 below. Then specify how often to run AutoArchive, we would suggest a max of 14 days here. 7 days is a good default setting.
- Set the "Clean out items older than", see point 2 in the image above, to the age you would like to move old emails to the archive folder. For example, if you wanted to move everything older than 2 months into the archive, you would set this like 2 months.
- The remainder of the options can stay as they are unless you have a specific need to change them.
- Click OK.
Auto Archiving will now run, according to these settings.
NOTE: Archived emails will appear in a separate folder, called "Archive" in your inbox. You may need to scroll down the list of folders on the left-hand side of outlook, to view this new archived folder.
Set Auto Archive for individual mail folders.
By default, each folder will have Auto Archive set and run as you have defined above. However, in some cases, you may wish to set a different time period, or action to take. You can set this on a folder by folder basis, by following the below:
- From your Inbox, right-click on the folder you wish to set Auto Archiving for, then choose properties.
- On the properties window, choose the AutoArchive Tab, as shown below in point 1. Then select "Archive this folder using these settings", see point 2 below and specify how often and what actions you wish to take.
- Click OK to save the settings.
You can do this for each folder.
NOTE: Archived emails will appear in a separate folder, called "Archive" in your inbox. You may need to scroll down the list of folders on the left-hand side of outlook, to view this new archived folder.
Tips
• To begin, we would suggest setting the default archive settings, as described above. Then go over each
folder, making sure they are set to either use the default settings or define your own custom settings.
Once set up, you will only need to modify should you see fit.
• We would suggest setting the archive period no longer than 3 months on most folders.
• Some folders, you may not need to keep a copy after a certain period, for example, Advertising material you
may receive. You can set the "Permanently Delete" option, shown in the image above on these folders.
• If you do not wish to Auto Archive a folder, simply set the option to "Do not archive items in this folder".
