Outlook 2003: "best practices" for archiving

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pjtc - 22 Sep 2007 00:42 GMT

I am looking for suggestions about "best practices" for archiving in Outlook
2003.

I currently have two archive files: one containing Sent Items from 2004
through 2005 and another for what I call an "archive" of completed jobs
(arranged in sub-folders first by customer and then by project), as well as
Sent Items from January 2005 to March 2007. With the current setup, I am
having a hard time coming up with a procedure for regular archiving.

I do not want to end up with an outrageous number of archive folders, as
that would complicate any research I might need to do in the future.

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Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook] - 22 Sep 2007 08:08 GMT

I don't know if anyone can really help you decide exactly how you want to
divide up your messages, since you are the only one who knows how often you
will need to access a particular set of items, or how they best relate to
each other. While having many different Archive files might be unwieldy,
it's also not a great idea to let them grow huge, if only because the more
items there are in the file, the slower Outlook's performance will be when
you access them. If the .PST files were created in the new Unicode .PST
format, you are more limited by your available hard drive space than by how
much each .PST file can store.

Do make sure you make regular backups of any .PST file you modify, and
verify that they are good backups. I would recommend keeping them closed
(i.e. not open in Outlook) when you're not using them, too...reduces the risk
they might be corrupted somehow, say if Outlook crashes.

I hope this has helped. Feel free to post back with any other questions.

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Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

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> I am looking for suggestions about "best practices" for archiving in Outlook
> 2003.
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> I do not want to end up with an outrageous number of archive folders, as
> that would complicate any research I might need to do in the future.

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mkhan@AdvenaArtemis.com - 29 Sep 2007 14:51 GMT

If you keep going with your current set up you are going to end up
with a massive archive file that will not perform well and eventually
corrupt. What I tell most of my clients is to create quarterly
archives and then set up quarterly views in the Activities tab of
their Contact folder properties so that multiple Archive folders can
easily be accessed quickly. The frequency of the archives (e.g.
quarterly, semi annual, or annual) really depends on the volume of e-
mail that you deal with. You really want to keep your archive folders
under 300,000 KB for optimum search performance so that is a good
guide for you. In your case since you want to minimize your number of
archive files, you also need to ask yourself how far back do you
really need to be albe to go quickly? I usually keep one years worth
of archives in my active folder list and if I need to access something
older, I can quickly and easily add the applicable archive back in. I
thought I'd need to add those old folders back all the time, but
really it doesn't happen very often at all in reality which you may
find as well.

Hope this helps!

Misty Khan
Advena Artemis - creators of the HuntressPro Suite of Microsoft
Outlook Add-ins
http://www.Arrow-Tips.com
http://www.HuntressPro.com

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