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Am I correct in stating that there is no difference in an Archive Folder and a Personal Folder? They are both Outlook Data Files (.pst). And you can have the AutoArchive dump into an existing Personal Folder .pst file, correct?
Why would you need to have a separate Archive and Personal Folder? Seems like you’d get mired in .pst files.
Thanks – Satiria
It makes you wonder what the systems administrator of Exchange is trying to achieve.
All they’re likely to do is have a nice tidy exchange system and lost mail all over the enterprise in a variety of C: drive cubbyholes.
It’d be interesting to hear the business rationalle behind that 
And yes I agree – the two files would be superfluous – just stick with the archive one.
Note, you can merge their contents by simply opening them both and dragging from one to t’other.
It makes you wonder what the systems administrator of Exchange is trying to achieve.
All they’re likely to do is have a nice tidy exchange system and lost mail all over the enterprise in a variety of C: drive cubbyholes.
It’d be interesting to hear the business rationalle behind that
And yes I agree – the two files would be superfluous – just stick with the archive one.
Note, you can merge their contents by simply opening them both and dragging from one to t’other.
My 
:
>Am I correct in stating that there is no difference in an Archive Folder and a Personal Folder? They are both Outlook Data Files (.pst).
Yes, you are correct. The difference between an ‘active’ PST and an ‘archive’ PST is purely nominal, not structural.
>And you can have the AutoArchive dump into an existing Personal Folder .pst file, correct?
Yes, if you point to it in the archiving process. You can also reload an ‘active’ PST with data from an ‘archive’ PST, or can manually (without using autoarchive regularly, occasionally, or ever) archive data to a nominal ‘archive’ PST, or can never use
>Why would you need to have a separate Archive and Personal Folder? Seems like you’d get mired in .pst files.
Only to manage the volume of items. (Lots of items, especially with attachments, will run up to the maximum PST size; this has been addressed pretty well by other posters), and to organize your data according to your needs.
OK, now I get long winded. At work I use a lot of folder structure to locate stuff in my PST, and leave almost nothing except Calendar items on the server side mailbox. (I should use categories more, but I don’t think that way.) I retain anything which may have a future business value (which is almost everything). At home, I don’t have a future value for junk jokes from relatives and offers to buy ** Spam post – please alert a Moderator **, so I’m a lot less structured and delete about 2/3rds of the messages and all past non-recurring calendar items. At work I just have my server side mailbox (plus a server side fax mailbox), one PST, and one archive, which I manage manually. At home just the one PST.
And backups.
Hi all – Thanks for everything that you’ve written back. Didn’t realize I was opening such a can of worms.
Andrew – it seems like every place that I’ve worked this scenario has come up. The server side exchange Mailbox has a limit – sometimes larger like the 55mb limit at the last place I worked, and sometimes smaller like the 13mb limit here. I believe the general purpose is to force users to clean up and prioritize their Inboxes, Sent Items, etc. which a lot of them WON’T do unless they see that annoying little “Your Mailbox is overs its size limit” error. When they do meet that maximum, you of course have those that will complain and want a larger size limit. Since you can’t change the rules for one person without changing the rules for all….then you end up suggesting Personal Folders, which becomes complicated if they already had other Archive folders, etc. Multiple .pst files everywhere!!!
And while we’re on the subject of Archive – does anyone else have a problem with that AutoArchive message that pops up early on in a new user’s Outlook “session” The one that basically says “AutoArchive does _____. Would you like turn this on” If you don’t take the time to read the mile-long message, then the average person is likely to choose Yes, which turns on their AutoArchive and begins dumping items every 15 days into an Archive.pst file that it created. And, if I’m not mistaken, the items that it dumps automatically (without you having to configure the folder’s properties) are your Sent and Deleted Items. Like I need to save those. I just think it would be better if the message never came up.
Exhale…… I think I just have something personally against AutoArchive. If I had my preference everyone would use a Personal Folders File and manually move items. OR…if they just HAD to move big date-based batches at a time automatically…they could manually Archive under File | Archive. I feel like AutoArchive is one of the CAUSES of those little batches of lost emails all over the hard drive.
Can of Worms – that’s how we get our entertainment and learn new things
What I have been told is that the main difference between an archive folder (archive.pst) and a personal folder (personal.pst) is that while you may have the personal folder open while you are working ( online), and that the archive folder opens up to autoarchive and then closes. Because archive closes, the probability that it will get corrupt is much less than the always open personal folder. And since the archive folder has all your old important emails those are the ones you don’t want to lose.
Redundant, sure, but at least everything is then time sensitive. Stuff on your server pst, is current stuff, the stuff in personal folders is within the last xxx months and the archive stuff is whenever you want to look for that one email that explained the one thing. 
What I have been told is that the main difference between an archive folder (archive.pst) and a personal folder (personal.pst) is that while you may have the personal folder open while you are working ( online), and that the archive folder opens up to autoarchive and then closes. Because archive closes, the probability that it will get corrupt is much less than the always open personal folder. And since the archive folder has all your old important emails those are the ones you don’t want to lose.
Redundant, sure, but at least everything is then time sensitive. Stuff on your server pst, is current stuff, the stuff in personal folders is within the last xxx months and the archive stuff is whenever you want to look for that one email that explained the one thing.
Not sure if this is the right place to post this (I’m using Outlook as part of Office XP, not 2000) but Andrew’s “can of worms” comment reminded me of something I’d like to do and haven’t figured out how, yet, in Outlook (in Entourage, the Mac version of Outlook, it’s easy) — that is to set a time for deleting items from your Sent and Inbox folders. I used to have Entourage set to delete all Sent messages older than 30 days, and all inbox messages older than 3 days. I would manually delete most of my inbox messages but kept one category/sender (listserv) of messages so they were readily available if someone asked (in the 3-day time span) “Did anyone save that message about XXX from YYY?” I don’t see any way to set up this “Auto-delete” function. 
(Just checked my Inbox size (which contains a number of categorized (personal?) folders, and it totals 1800 KB — still a long way from 2GB!)
OK — I checked that out and I had set autoarchive to 14 days, and 6 mo for clean out items older than… and move them to an archive folder. During Auto Archive I have all three checked (delete expired items (e-mail folders only), archive or delete old items, and show archive folder in folder list. The only thing I’m really concerned about is the “personal” folders I’ve set up within my Inbox folder. These are various categories where I save email messages that I might want to access later (i.e. one is “Reading List” with recommendations from my librarian listserv; another is messages relating to my genealogy research) There is a message in the genealogy folder dated 7 Jan 2004 but other than that, they’re all “younger” than 6 mo. (altho’ there are many “older” than 14 days). Some folders are emptier than I thought they would be — have I inadvertently auto-deleted my messages I thought I was saving?? 
OK — I checked that out and I had set autoarchive to 14 days, and 6 mo for clean out items older than… and move them to an archive folder. During Auto Archive I have all three checked (delete expired items (e-mail folders only), archive or delete old items, and show archive folder in folder list. The only thing I’m really concerned about is the “personal” folders I’ve set up within my Inbox folder. These are various categories where I save email messages that I might want to access later (i.e. one is “Reading List” with recommendations from my librarian listserv; another is messages relating to my genealogy research) There is a message in the genealogy folder dated 7 Jan 2004 but other than that, they’re all “younger” than 6 mo. (altho’ there are many “older” than 14 days). Some folders are emptier than I thought they would be — have I inadvertently auto-deleted my messages I thought I was saving??
Not sure if this is the right place to post this (I’m using Outlook as part of Office XP, not 2000) but Andrew’s “can of worms” comment reminded me of something I’d like to do and haven’t figured out how, yet, in Outlook (in Entourage, the Mac version of Outlook, it’s easy) — that is to set a time for deleting items from your Sent and Inbox folders. I used to have Entourage set to delete all Sent messages older than 30 days, and all inbox messages older than 3 days. I would manually delete most of my inbox messages but kept one category/sender (listserv) of messages so they were readily available if someone asked (in the 3-day time span) “Did anyone save that message about XXX from YYY?” I don’t see any way to set up this “Auto-delete” function. (Just checked my Inbox size (which contains a number of categorized (personal?) folders, and it totals 1800 KB — still a long way from 2GB!)
Can of Worms – that’s how we get our entertainment and learn new things
Hi all – Thanks for everything that you’ve written back. Didn’t realize I was opening such a can of worms.
Andrew – it seems like every place that I’ve worked this scenario has come up. The server side exchange Mailbox has a limit – sometimes larger like the 55mb limit at the last place I worked, and sometimes smaller like the 13mb limit here. I believe the general purpose is to force users to clean up and prioritize their Inboxes, Sent Items, etc. which a lot of them WON’T do unless they see that annoying little “Your Mailbox is overs its size limit” error. When they do meet that maximum, you of course have those that will complain and want a larger size limit. Since you can’t change the rules for one person without changing the rules for all….then you end up suggesting Personal Folders, which becomes complicated if they already had other Archive folders, etc. Multiple .pst files everywhere!!!
And while we’re on the subject of Archive – does anyone else have a problem with that AutoArchive message that pops up early on in a new user’s Outlook “session” The one that basically says “AutoArchive does _____. Would you like turn this on” If you don’t take the time to read the mile-long message, then the average person is likely to choose Yes, which turns on their AutoArchive and begins dumping items every 15 days into an Archive.pst file that it created. And, if I’m not mistaken, the items that it dumps automatically (without you having to configure the folder’s properties) are your Sent and Deleted Items. Like I need to save those. I just think it would be better if the message never came up.
Exhale…… I think I just have something personally against AutoArchive. If I had my preference everyone would use a Personal Folders File and manually move items. OR…if they just HAD to move big date-based batches at a time automatically…they could manually Archive under File | Archive. I feel like AutoArchive is one of the CAUSES of those little batches of lost emails all over the hard drive.
My :
>Am I correct in stating that there is no difference in an Archive Folder and a Personal Folder? They are both Outlook Data Files (.pst).
Yes, you are correct. The difference between an ‘active’ PST and an ‘archive’ PST is purely nominal, not structural.
>And you can have the AutoArchive dump into an existing Personal Folder .pst file, correct?
Yes, if you point to it in the archiving process. You can also reload an ‘active’ PST with data from an ‘archive’ PST, or can manually (without using autoarchive regularly, occasionally, or ever) archive data to a nominal ‘archive’ PST, or can never use
>Why would you need to have a separate Archive and Personal Folder? Seems like you’d get mired in .pst files.
Only to manage the volume of items. (Lots of items, especially with attachments, will run up to the maximum PST size; this has been addressed pretty well by other posters), and to organize your data according to your needs.
OK, now I get long winded. At work I use a lot of folder structure to locate stuff in my PST, and leave almost nothing except Calendar items on the server side mailbox. (I should use categories more, but I don’t think that way.) I retain anything which may have a future business value (which is almost everything). At home, I don’t have a future value for junk jokes from relatives and offers to buy ** Spam post – please alert a Moderator **, so I’m a lot less structured and delete about 2/3rds of the messages and all past non-recurring calendar items. At work I just have my server side mailbox (plus a server side fax mailbox), one PST, and one archive, which I manage manually. At home just the one PST.
And backups.
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