Move Old Email from the Server to your Desktop - Outlook 2013

Why move old email from the email server to your desktop?

Email servers are not designed for high volume long term storage. Better is to sort old email, typically by the year, save it to a desktop computer, then archive it to an encrypted external drive, as well as durable, inexpensive encrypted offsite storage. The email may be retrieved from storage as needed.

The following steps describe how to set up a new folder in desktop, name it, then move email from the email server into the new folder, removing the old mail from the server. The server will continue to save new mail.

  1. Open Outlook 2013
  2. In the left hand pane, find the group of folders titled Personal Folders.
  3. Right click on the Personal Folders group and select New Folder from the menu.
    New folder

  4. Name the New Folder. In this example we will name the new folder 2012 Customer Email.
    Example folder

  5. Navigate first to the account and folder on your desktop where the email on the server appears. Then select the emails you need move. Note that you can select the email using View/Columns to sort by To, From, Subject, Date etc.
    Select emails

  6. Right click on the selected emails and choose Move from the menu that appears, then click on the destination folder. The selected emails will be moved from the email server to local storage in the desktop.
    Move to folder

  7. You have successfully moved messages into the New Folder. You can now browse the messages by clicking on the folder under the Personal Folder group, titled 2012 Customer Email.