Please help me backup my Outlook files!?

[gizmo1990]

I'm having a really hard time getting my head around backing up my email inbox and sent items from Outlook?? Well come to think of it I want to back up everything!

The documentation for auto archive is absolutely awful. From what I can understand when you archive a .pst file is created with your relavent data. However how do you reload these old messages again and view them??

If anyone could give me some help here it would be greatly appreciated.

[babs]

You can either file > import & export > export to a file - and then use the same feature but choose import.

Or use auto archive. I use this a lot at work. You create a .pst which fils with the archived messages etc., then when you do a reinstall, enable auto-archive again and when it asks for a location point to the .pst you made already. It'll appear in your folder list and you can just drag items back.

[gizmo1990]

Thanks for the info babs.

I've been checking out AutoArchive's options and there's a part under 'Default folder settings for archiving' where it states 'Clean out items older than *insert length of time*' Do you know what this means exactly? I don't want anything 'cleared out' or erased.. ever, unless I say so.

At the moment mines set to 6 months.

[gizmo1990]

Actually I still don't get this!

All I want to be able to do is occasionally backup my outlook data to seperately named files so I can always go back to them if needed.

I've just AutoArchived my data from a set date and called the archive.pst a specific name. However when I go to View/Go to/Folder I'm presented with 2 folders (the other from a previous autoarchive) both called simply Archive!? How am I supposed to tell them apart? Why isn't the one I just backed up called the name I gave it??