AUTOARCHIVE doesn't work

  • Thread starter Thread starter Juha
  • Start date Start date
J

Juha

Dear all

We have exchange server and XP outlook 2002 clients. I
try to autoarchive (move) old mails to local or network
drive. The only result is that it archives directory
(folder) structure but the folders are empty. I can
manually export to file or drag files to those empty
archive folders.

I have default archive settings for all folders and
special settings for some folders. Also included do not
arrchive files.

Any hint how to implemet "working" autoarchive.
 
AutoArchive saves only those items past a certain age, using the Modified date (not Received or Sent). The usual cause of what you're seeing is that there are no items old enough to be archived.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
Here are the 2 most common reasons why Autoarchive does not seem to be
working:

1. AutoArchive uses the "Modified" field to determine whether an item is
old, not the "Sent" or "Received" fields. You may very find yourself in a
situation where a lot of your messages have been 'modified' without you
knowing. For example, if you move an item from one folder to another (on
Exchange), the modified date for that item will be reset to *now*. To
verify the "Modified" date for your items, right click on your columns and
choose 'Field Chooser'. From the "All Mail Fields" dropdown, drag and drop
the modified field to the column.

2. The second reason that AutoArchive may not seem to work is that the
"Archive or Delete Old Items" checkbox in the 'Tools | Options | Other |
Autoarchive' dialog is unchecked. ** Important note: This checkbox must be
enabled in order for the Autoarchive to run even if it is grayed out! To
enable it, check "Run Autoarchive every X days", then check "Archive or
Delete Old Items", and then uncheck "Run Autoarchive every X days" if you
want that option off.

--
Charles Beauregard-Tellier
Software Test Engineer
Microsoft Office

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send e-mail directly to this alias. This alias is for
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Yeah, Autoarchive is, and in my view has always been, fatally flawed
to the point of uselessness.

Firsly, there's no way to set the default autoarchive action to 'do
nothing' and there's no way to apply that setting to all folders. I
have a few dozen email folders and in order to set this I have to go
to each one individually and disable autoarchive for that folder.

Secondly, as you say, there should be a way to choose which date field
it uses to determine the age of a message, and this should be settable
on a per-folder basis.

I don't understand why the AutoArchive dialog doesn't contain a view
of your folders, allow you multiply select a set of folders and change
the settings for that set (just like the synchronization dialog). It
would be so much easier than having to navigate through the properties
dialog of each folder you want to change.

Also, how about having a feature that allows you to set a size (in KB)
limit on a folder (or, optionally, a tree of folders) so that messages
will be moved until the size of the messages in a folder (or a
sub-tree) reaches a minimum value. The root folder on an exchange
server could have an additional option that would archive old messages
to keep the message store within the administrator-set limits.

Piers.
 
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