Understanding .pst folders,and how Outlook differs from OE.

[sheana]

Hi,

I'm new to MS Outlook 2003, and am finding it difficult to understand the
difference between Outlook and OE. I just want to make sure my observations
are correct. OE stores email in multiple files with the .dbx extension,
whereas Outlook stores email in one file, the *pst file. The disadvantage
with this is with outlook you only have to backup the new files you create,
i.e. if you have a client and you sort his emails by year, you only have to
backup 2008, not 2007, 2006 etc. Not so with Outlook...you only have ONE
file for everything..the .pst file. So you have to keep backing up the whole
..pst file.

When I ran a search for my .pst files I found
C:\Documents and Settings\Sheana\Local
Settings\Application\Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst as well as
Outlook1.pst, Outlook2.pst and Outlook3.pst.

I have to Outlook profiles, but I don't know why I have 4 pst files, which
ones belong to profile 1 or 2.

Lastly, what are "Personal Folders" and what are "Archive Folders". There's
a feature call "autoarchive" that pops up now and then...is that the same
thing, or do you just create a new folder and name it "Archive". Thanks in
advance.

 

[Vince Averello [MVP-Outlook]]

Yes, all of your active data is in PST files, the autoarchive process moves
items past a certain age into another PST file.

 

[DL]

The outlook1.pst through to outlook3.pst are pst's you created
Each Profile can use a different pst
With outlook open if you examine the properties of Personal Folders, it will
reveal both the path and name

Autoarchive is a feature that removes mail from your pst file, according to
the modified date, and moves items to an Archive pst
You can modify both the archive settings and the path and or name used for
an archive file
The default name being Archive.pst, if in the path you rename this to eg
archive2008 a new archive will be created
Archives can be opened within Outlook and contents viewed just like any
other data file (pst).

Personal Folders is just a name for the outlook data file, which contains a
number of Folders, eg Inbox/Outbox etc

Do you actually need multiple Profiles?

The MS Outlook site has a free Backup addin
Since outlook requires full read/write access to its pst, if you open
outlook, do nothing with it, then close Outlook the pst will be flagged as
modified, such that backup software will then back it up.
The pst file is in reality a database.

 

[sheana]

Thank you for going into such detail..it was extremely helpful. I r-clicked

 

[DL]

You have to select Personal Folders, in the folder view, and properties of
that

 

[sheana]

Thanks so much DL!

You have to select Personal Folders, in the folder view, and properties of
that