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About this lesson
Store emails outside Outlook with other related files in one location, rather than digging through your inbox to find them.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019/365.
Quick reference
Store Emails Outside of Outlook
To keep an email topic with other related files/documents/graphics in one location, rather than digging through Outlook separately.
When to use
You would store emails outside of Outlook usually at the end of a big project when the files are being organized for archive purposes. A second reason would be if you have emails that are quite large and bogging down your Outlook performance.
Instructions
Export or back-up Outlook data
- Click the File ribbon, Options, Advanced.
- Locate the Export section and click Export.
- Choose Export to a File and click Next.
- Choose a file type.
- Comma Separated Values is compatible to Excel or Outlook.
- Outlook Data File (.pst) is compatible to Outlook only.
- Select the folder to export from.
- Outlook auto-names the file Backup.pst
- You should rename it to Inbox Backup.pst, then calendar backup, contacts backup, etc.
- You should click Browse and store this file somewhere safe on your computer or on a USB removable drive.
- Click Finish.
Tips
- Make your backup files individually for email, calendar, and contacts. Then in the case that you just need to restore contacts, you won’t overwrite months of new emails with old ones.
- Name your backup files accordingly and include the date in the name, i.e.:
Email backup, 05-05-20
Calendar backup, 05-07-20
Contacts backup, 06-08-20
Import or restore your data
- Click the File ribbon, Options, Advanced.
- Locate the Export section and click Export.
- Choose Import from another program or File and click Next.
- Choose a file type (pick the same type you chose when exporting.)
- Comma Separated Values is compatible to Excel or Outlook.
- Outlook Data File (.pst) is compatible to Outlook only.
- Click Browse and find your file.
- Select which folder to import from (should be the only folder unless you have done many of these.)
- Click Finish.
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- 00:04 Let's just say we have a client, and this client is OCP in my case.
- 00:09 I've got some emails in here with attachments on it.
- 00:11 When I'm done with this client, I no longer need them in my inbox occupying
- 00:15 space, but I have to keep the files together.
- 00:18 Along with all the letters I've sent,
- 00:20 along with all the publisher files I did for this client.
- 00:23 I want to keep the emails all packaged together outside of Outlook.
- 00:27 Well, here's how we do this, check this out.
- 00:29 We're going to do it twice for a reason, so just follow me.
- 00:32 First of all, I do want this file folder, OCP.
- 00:35 So I'm going to go to File, I'm going to go to Options,
- 00:39 I'm going to go to Advanced, we are going to export this again, right?
- 00:43 So right down here I do have the Export button, and
- 00:46 we're going to Export to a File, and Next.
- 00:49 Now I have two options, and I'm going to use them both.
- 00:51 Now, I'm going to a comma separated value,
- 00:54 because every single email will be a line item on that Excel sheet,
- 00:58 a great checklist or a great way to sort them quickly or find something in Excel.
- 01:04 So I'm going to go ahead and do this twice.
- 01:06 So I'm going to hit Next.
- 01:07 This is the file since I started by clicking on that, it now remembers that.
- 01:11 Hit Next again and it wants me to browse to find where I want to put that.
- 01:15 I want to put them in this my year 2020 Client files, I double-click that.
- 01:20 And I can call this OCP Client Emails.
- 01:23 Excellent, I'll go ahead and hit OK, here we go, hit Next.
- 01:28 Export, yes, hit Finish.
- 01:31 And there they go, they're flying over.
- 01:33 I'm going to do this one more time.
- 01:34 I'm not even going to reset myself back to the main screen because I'm still here on
- 01:37 my export.
- 01:38 So on the background you can see OCP,
- 01:40 I'm on Advanced, hit Export one more time, Export to a file.
- 01:45 And now I'm going to export as outlook data file.
- 01:47 The reason I'm doing that is because there was some attachments on those emails.
- 01:52 And they did not land in Excel.
- 01:54 I know from experience, they didn't.
- 01:56 So in case I want to see those attachments, I better have the original
- 01:59 outlook.pst, so I can pull them back into Outlook to see the attachments.
- 02:04 Okay, so hit Next, CSS OCP.
- 02:08 Hit Next again, I'm going to file it in the same.
- 02:11 I can go over here and click my documents, my 2020 Clients,
- 02:15 Inbox backup.pst this time.
- 02:18 Why can't you see the Excel one?
- 02:19 Because I'm doing a PST.
- 02:21 It's only showing me PST file types, not my Excel One.
- 02:23 Believe me, it is there.
- 02:25 We're just working with Outlook PST right now.
- 02:28 Hitting OK, hitting Finish, not going to pass with this, and it worked.
- 02:34 All right, so I'm going to go ahead and hit OK to this, I'm all done.
- 02:37 Well, lets go check out that file.
- 02:39 I'm going to open up my File Explorer.
- 02:41 Right up here, I'm going to open my 2020 Client Emails.
- 02:44 There are the two files.
- 02:46 Both of them are my February 2019 backup.
- 02:49 Yeah, they're the same one, I just failed to rename it.
- 02:51 I should have renamed it, remember the name from my previous video.
- 02:55 But that's okay, look at these files are minute apart from each other.
- 02:58 Let me double click to open the client emails.
- 03:00 Watch this.
- 03:01 When I open this, you're going to see Microsoft Excel.
- 03:03 Open up, here we go.
- 03:07 Excel opened up, and notice I've got the subject, I've got the body and the email.
- 03:12 So yes, the message is in there, it is in there, the from and to and everything.
- 03:16 But let me do a search for the word attach, like attachment.
- 03:20 Find Next, nothing, that's what I mean.
- 03:23 The Excel files did not receive the attachment,
- 03:25 that's why it has a secondary back up.
- 03:27 Do the Outlook file, so you can pull in the attachments.
- 03:31 Just in case you need to look at those attachments again all is not lost.
- 03:35 I am ready to retire this file and just call it good, and we're done with this.
- 03:39 And put it away on my bigger box or archive it at this point.
- 03:44 All right, that's just one more way to back up specific client files.
- 03:47 Thank you.
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