Backup Your Email in Outlook

If you are a Microsoft Windows user, it is quite likely that you are using Outlook as your email browser. Outlook is more than just an email browser; it is a database of all your business contacts, appointments and tasks, more so if you are using Business Contact Manager.

The Outlook database is stored in one of two places; a personal storage folder, also known as a .pst file, on your hard drive or in a mailbox on a Microsoft Exchange mail server if you are storing your email centrally.

It is always a good idea to backup your Outlook email database regularly. If your email is stored centrally, your administrator will already have a backup procedure installed.

If you have not yet moved to the more secure centralized storage, there are two ways to backup emails on your own PC.

One way to back up Outlook is to use the Outlook AutoArchive feature to move messages to an archive folder at regularly scheduled intervals.

How to Backup Your Email in Outlook Using AutoArchive

1. On the main menu, Select Tools, select Options, and then select the Other tab.
2. Click the AutoArchive button.
3. Select how often you want to Run AutoArchive
4. Select the options that you want.
5. If you select “Apply these settings to all folders now” it will override any custom archive settings previously specified on individual folders.

Another way to make a backup file, is to export the contents of the message folder to a backup .pst file using the Import and Export Wizard.

How to Backup Your Email in Outlook Using the Import and Export Wizard

1. On the main menu, select File then select Import and Export.
2. Select Export to a file, and then click Next.
3. Select Personal Folder File (.pst), and then click Next.
4. Select the folder you want to back up. (If the folder contains a subfolder that you want to include, select the Include Subfolders check box), and then click Next.
5. In the “Save exported file as” field, click Browse, and select a name and location for your backup file, for example, pst-bkup.
6. If you backing up to a .pst file that you backed up to previously, select one of the following:
7. Replace duplicates with items exported Existing data will be overwritten with the information in the file being exported.
8. Allow duplicate items to be created Existing data will not be overwritten, and duplicate information will be added to the backup file.
9. Do not export duplicate items Existing data will be kept, and the duplicate information in the folder will not be copied to the backup file.
10. Click Finish.

You can use a backup of your .pst file to restore or move your Outlook data if you experience a hardware failure, lose data unexpectedly, have to transfer data from one computer to another computer, or have to transfer data from one hard disk drive to another hard disk drive.

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