Archiving your Mailbox by year.  Let’s say you want to archive your folder structure by year.  Here is one way to do so.  I want to archive everything before 2006.

One issue with doing this is if you have a folder structure of 50 folders, it will keep the structure in place.  It doesn’t just bring over the folders from 2006.  It bring over everything and leaves the 2006 files in their folders.  The other folders will be empty.

1. File
2. Archive
3. Highlight your top level Mailbox – Your Name
4. Ok
5. Allow it to run through the archiving process.  It should show on the bottom right of outlook

Once you are done you should see a new folder below your mailbox, similar to this

Everytime you do this, it will be called Archive folder, which is confusing, so let’s rename it.

1. Highlight the folder called Archive Folders
2. Right click
3. Properties for “Archive Folders”
4. Advanced
5. Change the Name: 2006
6. 
7. OK
8. Now your Archive Folder is renamed to 2006.  Like below
9. 

If you didn’t see your Archive Folder, or you somehow closed it.  This is how you find it.

1. File
2. Open
3. Outlook Data file
4. Browse to the location that you put it above.   In this case c:\archives\2006.pst

Now that you completed 2006, you can do this for each year until you are up to date on your archiving.  Don’t forget to backup your data so you don’t lose anything!