An email archive is an ideal way to store old emails in such a way so as to be easily accessible and at the same time not to interfere with the normal email function.

 Outlook Express stores its messages in databases (.dbx files) and although there is no set limit for their size it is good practice to keep these databases to a reasonable size ( I try to  limit mine to 40MB).

 Large  .dbx files tend to slow down and have more of a tendency to become corrupt as they get large. In order to keep them to a reasonable size you need to :

1. Delete unwanted messages
2. Move old messages to a message archive or delete them

How to Create Outlook Express Archive

To create an email archive containing all their emails over a particular time you first need to create a folder/folders in which to archive the old emails. I would suggest using archive folder names like archive-1-2005, archive-2-2005 (were 1 = first quarter (Jan-mar)) or archive-jan-2005, archive-feb-2005 if you do monthly archives.

To archive old messages you simply find the old messages and move them to the archive folder at regular intervals (every month or every quarter).
 

Moving Old Messages to the Archive

Outlook Express allows you to search for all messages older than a certain date. So to move all messages older than 3 months to an archive folder proceed as follows:

1.Click find and click the received before box.
2. Select a date three months prior to today.
3. Click find now.
4. Click edit and select all.
5. Click  move to folder and select the archive folder.
6. Right click the deleted items folder and empty it.

Note: If you are using an Hotmail account make sure you search your Hotmail folder!

If your computer is running low on disk space you can move the archive folders to another disk or to CD by doing a search for "foldername.dbx" and then moving the folder. When you restart outlook Express it will recreate the folder but it will be empty. You can then manually delete the folder from within Outlook Express.

Finding Archived Messages

There are several methods you can use to locate messages from your email archives. If you have moved the messages to an archive folder but still have the folder available in Outlook Express you can use the find feature of Outlook Express.

If you have moved the archive folders to another part of your computer and they are not accessible to Outlook Express you could try using the Google desktop search.

Message Archives and Backups

Although most backup software claims to archive Outlook Express messages not all of them do. While a backup can be used as an archive it is generally not as good as a real archive in that the messages in the backup are not normally accessible unless you restore the backup.

Hence the criteria that an archive should store messages in a manner that makes  them easily accessible is not fulfilled. I will be looking at Outlook Express archiving software in a forthcoming article.
 

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