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Is there a way to use AutoArchive to regularly move messages older than a relative time (e.g. 'one week', 'three months', etc.) to a specific folder?

Within Outlook I can apparently only use AutoArchive to move old emails to:

  1. A PST file
  2. The Archive folder

The problems with #1 are that I want my old e-mails to still be searchable, and my organization does not backup .pst files in OneDrive.

With #2 the issue is that it seems like AutoArchive will dump all of the e-mails into the root Archive folder. I have many subfolders in my Inbox and would like to have an identical folder structure in my Archive folder. Having them all dumped into a single Archive folder makes it harder to parse if I need to search a specific subject.

Basically what I want is to be able to select a folder and say "for any emails older than X, move them into subfolder Y within Archive" where Y can be different for each folder I choose to archive. Is this possible with AutoArchive, or would I need to rely on third party tools?

TripleD
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  • You could locate your own PST archive into your own OneDrive. That way archive folders will be the same as your main folder and searchable. Just change the folder location in Archive settings. – John Jul 27 '21 at 18:30
  • That would work, but moving work e-mails into a private OneDrive would definitely violate company policy. Thank you for the suggestion all the same. – TripleD Jul 27 '21 at 19:14
  • You might ask them if you could do that. I never suggest violating policies. However the Archive PST file is about the only solution that will work. So ask them and also if they can provide a Work OneDrive for you. – John Jul 27 '21 at 19:16

1 Answers1

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As I know, the features supported by automatic archiving are included in this article: AutoArchive settings explained. There seem to be no settings or options that can achieve your expectation. I also have tried to use manual archive, but only empty subfolders can be displayed and the messages of subfolders are displayed in the root Archive folder.

I noticed that you mentioned that it will work when you locate your own PST archive into your own onedrive. If possible, please take into account John's suggestion. If you really need this function, it is recommended that you could give feedback in Outlook client(File>Feedback>Suggest a Feature). Hope Microsoft will pay attention to this issue in the future.

Christy
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  • Greatly appreciate the link, and will definitely be making the suggestion in the future. Another possibility that occurred to me is to switch to organizing with tags/categories rather than folders. If I do that it doesn't matter if they all get dumped in the archive folder together. I'm a bit old-school in my organization, so this may be the kick in the pants I need to update my skillset. – TripleD Jul 28 '21 at 18:05
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    niu wa niu wa ! – Jeff Yang7 May 12 '22 at 07:30