The article will show you what the Archive mailbox is, where to find it and what to do with the mailbox.
What is the archive mailbox in Outlook for the Mac?
With the Archive mailbox the emails you can move emails from the server to a mailbox on your computer.
Where can you find the archive mailbox in Outlook for the Mac?
An Archive mailbox is automatically created by Outlook for each account and looks like a regular mailbox:
Remember that the mailbox is only a local mailbox.
How to move an email to the Archive mailbox in Outlook for the Mac?
The easiest way to use the Archive mailbox is to just select some emails and drag them into the Archive mailbox.
The toolbar button "Archive" does the same:
You can also select Message -> Archive in the menu or use the keyboard shortcut ^E.
You can add the Archive mailboxes to the Favourites.
Mouse over the number of emails of the Archive mailboxes are until you see a star:
Click on the star and the Archive mailbox will be in the Favourites:
Of course, as developer of Mail Archiver I don't use the Archive mailbox myself.
Does archiving this way save space in Outlook for the Mac?
Archived emails don't count against the quota of your accounts because the emails are stored locally. However, archived emails don't save space on your hard disk because you just moved the emails from one location to another on the same hard disk.
Can you delete the archived emails in Outlook for the Mac?
Of course, you can delete the archived emails because they are just in a local mailbox.
Can you unarchive emails in Outlook for the Mac?
Select some emails and move them back to the original account.
Are archived emails searchable in Outlook for the Mac?
Yes, they are.
Benefits of using a local archive mailbox in Outlook for the Mac
- It's simple to use.
- The emails are no longer stored on the IMAP server.
Drawbacks of using a local archive mailbox in AppleMail
- You have to archive the emails manually and not automatically.
- You lose your mailbox organisation. Everything ends up in the same mailbox.
- You can't store the archived emails on an external disk.
- You can't store the archived emails in a different format.
For each of the drawbacks you can use Mail Archiver. You can archive automatically, keep your mailbox organisation. Of course, you can store the archived emails on an external hard disk. And you can use PDF or Filemaker if you want.
Next we are going to look at archiving in Gmail which - as always - does things the Gmail way.