✅How To Archive Items in Outlook Automatically [ Best Ways ]

You often regularly send, receive, and forwarded emails daily. If you are using an email service for almost 10 years, you will note how many messages you have stored in your email.

Then you need to manually delete them, plus the older emails that are no longer useful for you consume drive data. Or you can move them to another folder.

But there is a limitation if you are deleting messages. It may happen when you delete a message that is important to you. So what’s the best option to release the server’s space and also How to Archive items in Outlook to access the older messages?

Outlook email client provides you to archive your emails. Archive means moving all your older emails to your local computer in a .pst file, and later you can use outlook to open this file to access your older emails.

The outlook algorithm archive your emails automatically, or you can archive them manually also. Today we will see how outlook archive our emails automatically if enabled. Otherwise, you can do it manually.

Archive older items Automatically

Regular emails like a new message, reply, or forward message can fill your outlook inbox quickly. You have to manage your inbox, or you can depend on the AutoArchive function available on Outlook.

Keep your outlook inbox under control by archiving your older emails. Here how you can automatically archive emails in outlook:-

For Office 2007:- By default, outlook archive your emails automatically and runs every 14 days. You can also change how often AutoArchive runs for you. Specify the .pst file to store your archived emails, and choose when your items need to be archived.

Open your Office 2007, under the Menus, select the Tools tab on the menu bar.
Now a new menu will open, and select Outlook Options.
A new options window will open select the Other
Now click on The AutoArchive window will open. Now check on Run AutoArchive every __ day, and enter days value to run AutoArchive. You can also check on Prompt before AutoArchive runs. If enabled, it will ask you whether to run or not. To cancel that Archive Session, click on No.
You want to delete your emails when their aging period is expired. You can enable it by checking on Delete expired items (email folders only). The default time period is six months and three months. You can change it by using clean out items older than and change it according to your convenience.
Move older items to is located according to the Windows version that you are using. You can also set the destination where you want to store your older items(a .pst file).
Now click on Ok, and you are ready to go.

Change the AutoArchive settings for an individual folder.

If your email contains many folders, and you want to apply the AutoArchive setting for those folders only that are important for you. So here how you can do it:-

In the Navigation pane, select the folder and right-click on it. A new menu will open and select Properties in that.
In the new window, select the AutoArchive tab and change the setting according to your convenience and click on Ok.

How to archive items in Outlook manually?

If you want to archive items manually, you can do it with Outlook. They will get archived only when you want. With this, you can control items to archive, set the location to store them, and how old an item needs to be archived. Here how you can manually archive an item in outlook:-

For Office 2007:-

Open Outlook and select File on the menu bar, and click on Archive.
A new archive window will appear to select the Archive this folder and all subfolders Now specify a date under Archive items older than.
Now specify the location or a new file under the Archive file. If you don’t want, leave it as it is and click on Ok.
Now check on the Include items with the “Do not AutoArchive” checked To not automatically archive a specific item, override the previous setting.
Then click on Ok to apply the setting.

For Office 2010:-

Open your outlook 2010, and select the File
Now click on Cleanup Tools.
After this, click on the Archive
A new Archive window will open, select Archive this folder and all subfolders and specify the date under Archive items older than.
If you are happy with the default file or location, otherwise click on Browse under Archive file. Make sure to check on Include items with “Do not AutoArchive” checked.
Now click on Ok to apply the setting.

For outlook 2013. 2016, or 2019:-

Open your outlook and click on the File
Now click on Cleanup Tools, a popup menu will open, and click Archive in that.
Under the Archive window, select the Archive this folder and all subfolders and select the folder which you want to archive. Specify the date under Archive items older than.
Make sure to check Include items with “Do not AutoArchive” checked. Select the Browse button if you don’t want the default location under the Archive file.

Archive items in outlook on Mac

Outlook on Mac provides a new feature called one-click archiving. This feature allows you to move older inbox messages to the archive folder quickly. You can access your archived items anytime. Here how you can archive items on Mac.

This setting will work on any of the email accounts that you have connected to outlook. Including Exchange, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, Hotmail, iCloud, Google, and Yahoo.

Open Outlook on Mac, and open the folder which you want to archive.
Now select one or more messages in that folder and click on the Archive button on the ribbon.
Once you click on the Archive button, messages will move to the archive folder that you specified.
If this is your first time using the archive, the prompt will appear says The Archive folder for Microsoft does not exist.
You can click on Continue to create it or click on Choose Another Folder to select an existing folder for the archive.

If you don’t see the Archive button on the ribbon.

Outlook provides a customizable toolbar for Mac users so the users can have set the accessible features easily. If the Archive button doesn’t appear on the ribbon, you can follow the below steps to customize your toolbar:-

Click on the 3 dots(…) that is See more items in the toolbar. A popup menu will open, and select Customize Toolbar.
In the new window, select and drag the Archive option under the Mail Option up to the toolbar and release it where you want. That option will appear where you dragged it.
To remove an item from the toolbar, select and drag that item to the Mail Option and release the mouse button.
Now click on Done when you are finished, and your toolbar will get customized. To undo the changes, instead of Done, click on Undo.
Once your toolbar is customized, you can follow the above steps to archive an item in Outlook.

This was all about how you can archive items in Outlook. There is a difference in outlooks windows and Mac app client but I cover both topics. So just follow the steps according to your operating systems. The best feature provided by Outlook for Mac users is the one-click archive.