How to archive IMAP messages in Outlook 2019
If your IMAP mailbox is full or is approaching the disk usage limit for your account, you may need to archive messages by copying them to an offline location on your computer. This will allow you to free up space within your mailbox without permanently deleting historic messages.
The following guide should explain how to create an archive location in Outlook 2019.
Please Note: The label and location of some options will vary between Outlook versions. For older versions of Outlook please see our guide here.
Creating an Archive Data-File in Outlook
If you do not have a local folder location or data file within Outlook for archiving messages, you can follow the steps below to create a new data file.
- Go to the File menu.
- Open the Account Settings menu.
- Go to the tab within the account settings menu for Data Files.
- Select Add to create a new data file (.pst file).
- Enter a file-name for the data file and select a location if required then select Ok to create the new data file.
- Close the Account Settings.
- You should see now that a new folder location has been added within the folders pane in Outlook.
- Right-click on the folder heading to add sub-folders to copy your mail items to.
Archiving Messages in Outlook
After creating an archive location and data file you can copy messages from your IMAP mailbox to folders created under this data file by highlighting the messages you want to archive in your IMAP account and dragging and dropping them in to the required folder under this data-file. The messages will then be moved to the selected location and automatically removed from your IMAP mailbox on the LCN server.
You can also use the auto-archiving features in Outlook by going to the File menu and selecting Tools, then selecting Clean Up Old Items.
Select the folder that you want to archive, set a date range to archive messages for and select the data file location that the archived messages should be moved to. Select Ok to automatically archive messages for the selected folder and date-range.
Once your account has completed synchronising in Outlook, you can check that the disk usage for your account has updated by logging in to Webmail: https://webmail.lcn.com.
That’s it! You have now archived messages using Outlook 2019.