Protecting Email Archives

Outlook on Windows PCs will automatically archive older email data, to keep your mailbox trim, and to keep only more recent data on the Email servers.  By default, these archive files are located on the C drive of your PC.    Occasionally we'll have customers who have had a hard drive crash, or they get a new computer, and then wonder where their Outlook archive file went. 

Not to worry, there is a way to avoid losing Outlook email archives. 

If you logon to the HCI domain, and have an "O-drive", there's a handy little batch file you can copy to your Desktop and double-click on once a week or so.  

  1. Navigate to the X drive, then Public, find the file named "backup-email-archives" and copy it to your Desktop.
  2. Double-click on this icon once a week or so.  It will copy any PST (ie, Archive) files  from your Outlook profile on your PC to the O:\Email folder on your O drive, then give a listing of files it has just copied.  NOTE: for this process to work, you need to exit Outlook and you must have an O drive.

(Why not just locate your Archive files on the O drive to begin with?  It will slow down Outlook and make it so Outlook won't run if your O drive isn't present, for whatever reason).