Back Up Outlook Email

Unlike the OE paradigm that stores messages in multiple email files, Outlook uses only a single file for all email messages. This file has a .pst extension. As you might guess, this file can grow very, very large. But you can just back up a portion of the .pst file rather than the whole thing.

To get started with Outlook backup:

1.	In the Outlook window, click File | Import and Export. It doesn't matter which folder you have selected when starting this procedure.
2.	In the Import and Export dialog box, choose "Export to a file" and click Next.
3.	Now, choose the Personal Folder File (.pst) file type and click Next again.
4.	From the dialog box shown in Figure 12-10, choose the folder you want to back up. You can choose all subfolders of the chosen folder (if they exist) with the "Include subfolders" check box. Click Next. Figure 12-10. Backing up an Outlook folder.
5.	Now choose the location for the saved .pst file, and set the save options. If you've created a backup of the same name before, you can replace duplicates with items exported, allow duplicates to be created, or choose not to export duplicate items.
6.	Click Finish to start the backup operation.

There's a separate procedure in Outlook called Archiving, which, while similar, is not the same as making a backup file. A discussion of Archiving is beyond the scope of this book.