Bob said:
I have Auto Archive turned on for my users mailboxes. I have them set for
each users needs - some need 6 months mail, etc, some get deleted, managers
get archived to a server.
I randomly checked Outlook on various system and saw there was more then the
amount requested to keep in auto archive. On some --- I manually archived to
bring the retention up to date - some systems did, others did not manually
archive to the exact date.
Anyone experience this in outlook 2003 - does another version archive more
reliable ?
My users will not archive, to them ---- leave it, so I want to use something
to automate the process, so I thought use the built in AutoArchive.
I appreciate any information to help me autoarchive
Thanks,
Bob
Do not use .pst files, including those for archives, on a networked host
(i.e., archived to a server). There is no client running on the
networked host to gracefully close the .pst file in case of a network
outage, if the networked host goes down, or for any reason the open file
on the networked host gets slammed shut. Outlook does not support its
files on other than the local host. Reconfigure the hosts to use
archive .pst files on those same hosts. If they need to be backed up
then so do other data files on that user's host and you should be
employing client-server backup software to backup those user hosts.
So what are the expiration settings (days) set for the archive attribute
on the folders versus the expiration setting (days) for the global
archive function? The archive attribute on a folder is only when items
beyond that expiration are *eligible* for archiving. They don't get
archived until the archive function is actually ran.
If you set a folder to archive items that are over 10 days old but the
global archive expiration is 3 days, the archiving function will run
every 3 days but none of the items are eligible until they are over 10
days old. That means you'll run 4 archive runs. The first 3 runs
didn't archive anything because the items weren't yet over 10 days old.
If you set a folder to archive items that are 1 day old but the global
archive function's expiration is 10 days, the archive function only runs
every 10 days. That means items will have been eligible for archiving
for the prior 9 days but sit there waiting until the archive function
finally runs on the 10th day.
If you want archiving of eligible items to occur as they become eligible
then the global archive expiration (when it runs) must be shorter than
the archive expiration of the folder. However, you still have a lull if
the archive function doesn't run for several days apart. The global
archive might be set for 3 days with the folder making items eligible
after only 1 day; however, the archive might run the 1st day, an item
become eligible the 2nd day, but it won't get archived until the 3rd
day.
To have items get archived on the same day they become eligible, you
need to set the global archive expiration to 1 day. That means
archiving will run every day and that means it runs on the same day as
an item becomes eligible. This also means you will probably run the
archive job far more often than needed. You might configure a folder to
archive items after they are 1 year old. That means there will be 364
archive runs that do nothing until the 365th day when some items become
eligible. It's up to you as to how often *eligible* items get moved
into an archive.
It's just like trash collection at your house. You can pile in items
into your trashbin every day but the trashbin doesn't get unloaded until
the garbage crew makes their rounds once per week. If you paid them to
show up every day, your trashbin would get emptied every day even when
you haven't yet put anything in it, but if you did put something in it
then it'll be empty for tomorrow's load.
