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Is your mailbox getting full? One way to solve this issue is with a .pst file archive. Archives don’t count against the size of your mailbox, and can be accessed at any time. This guide will help you create and manage archives with .pst files in Outlook 2013.

Table of Contents

A) Creating an Outlook Archive

B) Archiving Emails Sent or Received Prior to a Specified date

C) Setting up Automatic Archiving

D) Accessing the Archive

A) Creating an Outlook Archive

To create an Outlook Archive (a .pst file), open Outlook 2013, click on the home tab, then new items, more items and then Outlook Data File… 

Then navigate with Windows File Explorer to the location that you want to save the archive file, name it what you want, and then press OK.

The new archive will appear in the left column below your mailboxes. To expand the archive, click the triangle to the left of the archive’s display name.

To create a new folder, right click on the archive, and then click on New Folder…

You can then add additional folders to the archive by selecting the New Folder option:

Finally, you can then drag and drop email messages from your inbox directly into this newly-created subfolder.

B) Archiving Emails Sent or Received Prior to a Specified date

To have Outlook archive emails sent or received prior to a specified date, first go to the file menu.

Next go to Cleanup Tools, and click on Archive…

Next click on Archive this folder and all subfolders, and choose the folder you want to archive. You can opt to archive your whole mailbox by clicking on your email address, or you can select a specific folder in your Inbox.

Then select the date threshold for archiving. Outlook will archive all emails older than the date you specify.

Next click on browse to choose a location for the archive.

Navigate to the desired destination directory. You can either select an existing .pst file, or create a new one by editing the file name. Press OK when finished. 

C) Setting up Automatic Archiving

To have Outlook auto-archive, so that it will periodically check for old emails and archive them for you, first click on the inbox that you want to auto-archive, then go to the FOLDER menu in Outlook and click on AutoArchive Settings.

Next click on the circle next to Archive Items in this folder using the default settings, and then Default Archive Settings…

Several options are available in the AutoArchive window:

You can choose how often AutoArchive runs by changing the Run AutoArchive every [ ] days to the desired frequency. Make sure to uncheck Delete expired items (e-mail folders only). You can also select the desired age that emails must be in order to be archived by increasing or decreasing the Clean out items older than counter, and by selecting the desired unit of time. Finally, make sure to select a specific archive destination by choosing Move old items to:, and clicking Browse…

Navigate to the desired destination directory. You can either select an existing .pst file, or create a new one by editing the file name. Press OK when finished.

Then press OK in the AutoArchive window, and then OK in the Inbox Properties.

D) Accessing the Archive

Archives can only be opened on one computer at a time, and they are also not accessible via Web Outlook.

To open the archive on another computer, you must first close it on the current computer by right-clicking on the archive’s display name and then on Close “[Your Archive name]”

Next, on the second computer, open Outlook 2013, click on File, then Open & Export and then click on Open Outlook Data File.

Finally, navigate to your Outlook Archive, click on it and press OK.