Managing Your Inbox: How to Archive Emails in Outlook Efficiently

Archiving helps you organize your inbox without having to delete anything. It moves the emails in the query to a different folder, keeping your primary inbox clean and letting you keep the more important emails in front of you. This article explains what archiving does, but before that, let us go step by step through Outlook - Archive Emails. We will also examine the different conditions where archiving your emails can be useful. At the end of this article, you'll know how to keep your inbox clean and where you might find archived emails when the need arises. Let's begin!

What Does Archiving Do?

Imagine archiving an email as a digital version of putting away the old letters in a storage box. You might need them again someday, so you do not push them in the garbage, but you stuff them in a box and forget about them. That is exactly how Outlook - Archive Emails works. 


Outlook moves archived emails from your inbox to the archive folder, so they won't remind you of their presence unless you need them. You can still find them when you're searching for something, so archiving something is basically a means to clean up your primary inbox and keep things organized.


To summarize, archiving performs the following in Outlook:


  • Cleans your inbox: It moves all those emails that you do not need to your inbox, cleaning them up.

  • Alternative to deletion: Deleting emails can also clear your primary inbox, but archiving is another option that makes it happen without losing access to the email.

  • Keeps search intact: Archived emails remain in search results, making them easy to find from within Outlook.

  • Helps you focus: When there are not as many emails, it's easier to focus on the important ones.



How to Archive Emails in Outlook

Outlook allows you to archive email conversations with one click, and the process is very simple and easy; power users can also set rules that will automatically send certain messages to the archive folder.


Let's walk you through the process of manually archiving an email in Outlook rule to send a particular email directly to the Archive folder.


Manually Archiving Emails

Simply open the email you want to archive or check multiple emails in case you wish to archive a few emails. Click on "Archive," located in the menu bar right above your list of emails. Alternatively, right-click on an email and click the "Archive" option from the list.


Automatically Archiving Emails with Rules

Outlook allows you to set up rules that will automatically check incoming emails and then take specific actions on them. This is helpful when automatically archiving emails from a particular sender; here is how you can quickly set up the rule to do so:


Open an email from the sender you want to set up the rule for. At the top bar right above the opened email, click on three dots to open a dropdown menu. Under the "Rules" option, click on "Create rule." Rule to Archive Emails in Outlook Select the folder you want to move messages from the sender to. You can also create more folders and set up the rules for them in the same manner. 


Outlook also allows you to set different conditions for your rules, such as matching keywords in the subject line or the email body as well as the sender; these can help you narrow down your automation and make it more effective. You can use these conditions from Settings > Mail > Rules.

How to Find Archived Emails in Outlook

There are many people who delete newsletters after reading them, but others like to switch to the archive button instead. But if Outlook automatically removes the archived e-mails from your inbox, then how do you find them?


Finding Outlook - Archive Emails isn't much different than finding a normal e-mail; you can either search for it or directly open the Archives Folder instead.


Archiving Emails vs Deleting Emails


When you are cleaning up your Inbox, you may be deleting emails on a regular basis, especially if you have never seen the archive button.  Both of these options do clean up your inbox, they simply do so in different ways.


Here is a quick analysis of the difference between archiving and deleting emails in Outlook:


Archiving Emails

  • Emails are moved to the “Archive” folder.

  • Emails in the “Archive” folder will remain there permanently.

  • Archived Emails still carry storage space in your Outlook account.

  • You can safely archived emails and review them in the future.


Deleting Emails

  • Emails go to the "Deleted Items" folder.

  • After 30 days, Outlook automatically deletes all emails that you deleted.

  • The deleted emails no longer exist, so they do not occupy any cloud storage space.

  • Only delete emails that you're ready to lose access to forever.


When clearing your inbox, consider if an email is important then archive it. If an email isn't important and you'll never need it again, delete it.




Emails You Should Archive

Here are the different kinds of emails that you should keep:


  • Financial Transactions: Emails that talk about your financial transactions, statements, bills, and taxes. This can be archived. You don't know when you'll need to recall the records for tax purposes or even planning budgets.


  • Work Conversations: You should archive emails related to important work discussions, decisions, or documents. It's always good to have the records of these in case you need them later.


  • Receipts: Whether it is an online purchase, booking confirmation, or a subscription for any service, the archive of such emails may prove helpful in case any issues come up.


  • Personal Milestones: Emails marking important events in your life and accomplishments, like job offers, acceptance letters, or any other professional achievements are to be preserved in an archive for emotional value.


  • Legal Documents: Emails that act as legal records of agreements, contracts, or any legal communication must be in the archive folder because these documents are very important for future reference or verification.


  • Project Files: Any ongoing or completed projects will require emailsd in the form of discussion, drafts, and feedback. You can use them when you work on other projects or at the time of performance review. Especially useful for proposals, where you can take a good one written earlier and alter it to make it presentable to other clients.


  • Travel Documents: Tickets, hotel booking, and travel documents can act as a legal record of your travel history. Do not delete these emails; instead, archive them.

Conclusion

Know you have an excellent idea about the emails that you should archive and permanently maintain a record. The last choice totally depends on your personal preferences and importance. Solix Technologies have  amazing Email Archiving solution i.e. SOLIXCloud Email Archiving. It is a fully managed email archiving service that seeks to simplify eDiscovery, compliance, and email growth management. This is a secure, highly scalable, and user-friendly email archiving solution for businesses of any size.   

FAQs

1. What are the benefits of email archiving?

It helps to store old emails that you do not need immediate access to but do not want to delete, above the convenience of quickly finding emails and preserving server speeds. Email archiving is important for security and compliance purposes. In short, it's just good business practice.

2. Does archiving emails improve Outlook performance?

Archives emails in Outlook can save you plenty of time and space and shrink your mailbox size while reducing the amount of data that needs to be processed by Outlook, improving its performance and reliability, and making you not reach your storage quota.

3. What does Outlook archive use for?

These customers can create an Online Archive to avoid having to delete old mail. An Online Archive works like a second account in Outlook with its own folder structure.

4. How to bulk archive emails in Outlook?

To mass archive emails in Outlook, select all messages you wish to delete from Inbox, then click the Archive button. 


5. Does archiving emails reduce storage?

Storing all your emails in an archive that is off your email server saves you space, keeps all your important e-mails on your server, and never has to delete an email to save yourself from accidentally deleting important files.


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