How do I... Archive Outlook e-mail without a PST file?

Organizations and employees, of course, are increasingly dependent upon e-mail. From correspondence with customers and clients to strategic communications with colleagues, vendors, suppliers and others, e-mail has become a business critical application. Information technology departments have responded accordingly. Back-end e-mail servers are often well-hardened, run on dedicated systems and feature intricate remote or offsite backups. But an age-old problem remains: how to effectively store old e-mail while maintaining accessibility to those messages.

Microsoft's answer has been the PST (Personal Storage File) file and an intricate archiving dance. Redmond uses the PST file to store Calendar items, e-mail, Journal entries and Tasks on local Windows workstations. Users, meanwhile, are responsible proper archiving (which requires specifying archive periods, file locations, folder and subfolder locations, etc.).

Thankfully, there's an effective alternative to archiving Outlook e-mail using only PST files.

Just use folders.

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