Move your Personal Archives (.PST) to the Cloud

Summary

Take advantage of the new 1TB mail storage and move your local PST archives to the cloud for security and access from anywhere!

Body

Note: This process involves file management that, if done incorrectly, could result in the loss of email. If you are uncertain of any of these steps please consult with ITSS.

In years past, PST archives were used to store email that a user wished to keep, but server space or organizational practices necessitated pulling mail off the server and into PST archives.
Some users also refer to PSTs as their "Personal Folders" or "Archive Folders."

Some major drawbacks to PSTs:

They also have size limits.
They are local to the machine - meaning you can not access mail in them remotely.
They may become corrupted or lost for any number of reasons.
Can be lost or damaged during system maintenance. 

With our new email system, users have 1TB (One Terabyte or 1000 Gigabytes!) of storage space. This is enough space to host your archives in the cloud so that you may access ALL your mail from where ever you are in the world. 

To import PST Archives to the cloud:

Create a folder underneath the account username. Something like Archives or PersonalFolders. Doesn’t really matter what you call it.

Outlook Folders

Scroll down to the PST item and right click its name.

Click Data File Properties and then hit the Advanced button. Make note of the path where the PST lives.

Close Outlook.

Go to where the PST lives and copy+paste it to a flash drive for backup.

Open outlook.

Scroll to the PST name and click CLOSE DATA FILE.

Highlight the Folder you created in Step 1 (where the mail will be placed)

Navigate to FILE> Open & Export > Import/Export

Import from another program or file

Outlook Data File (.pst)  > Next

Browse to select the PST file

Select Do Not Import Duplicates > Next

The name of your PST will appear in the window. Be sure that Include Subfolders is checked and select Import Items Into the Current Folder > Next

Sit back and watch the magic happen. If all goes correctly, the mail will migrate to the folder you created and designated as the target. Then the PST will auto-close. Give it some time for all mail to populate. You have the backup on flash drive to repeat the process should anything have gone wrong.

 

 

 

Details

Details

Article ID: 10859
Created
Fri 1/22/16 4:13 PM
Modified
Mon 10/14/24 6:52 PM