Frequently Asked Question

This tutorial applies to the following operating system(s):

Windows

Macintosh

Overview

After completion, you will have an archived .pst file of your entire inbox.

While your Office 365 email account comes with 50 gigabytes of space and web access anywhere in the world, there are still times that an archive of your inbox may be desirable. Using Microsoft Outlook, creating a fully usable, portable snapshot of your inbox is easy!

Create a .pst file in Outlook 2016

Step 1:

With Outlook open, from the top menu bar click the File tab in Windows (Tools on a Mac), then select Open & Exportand select Import/Export from the menu. On a Mac, select Export. The Outlook Import and Export Wizard will open up and guide you through the process.

Click the file tab at the top, then select Open & Export and select Import/Export from the menu.

Step 2:

Click the file tab at the top, then select Open & Export and select Import/Export from the menu.

For Windows: On the first screen, be sure to select Export to a File and click next. On the following screen, be sure to select Outlook Data File (.pst). For Mac: Select the item types to export and click Continue.

On the first screen, be sure to select Export to a File and click next.

Step 3

For Windows: The next screen will have a tree structure of your current inbox. You can either select various folders to back up, or simply select the top item, youremail@cdaid.org and make sure Include Subfolders is checked to make a backup of your entire inbox. The final two screens will ask you to specify a location for your .pst file to save to, and ask if you would like to put a password on it.

For Mac: Select the destination, and change the name of the file if so desired, then click Save. Note that a mac's archive is actually a .olm file, not a .pst file.

That's it, you now have a working backup of your .pst file which you can transfer to another hard drive or computer!

You can either select various folders to back up, or simply select the top item, youremail@cdaid.org and make sure Include Subfolders is checked to make a backup of your entire inbox.

Connecting your .pst file and Recovering Emails

Now that you have your .pst file, you can easily get back into it by "connecting" or "linking" it to an email client. PST files are a universally-accepted format and can be plugged in to Outlook, Thunderbird and many other email clients.

Step 1:

If you're using a Mac, open up the Tools tab, select the type of file (depending on which computer you used to export the file) and click import.

On a Windows computer, with Outlook open, click the File tab at the top, then the Account Settings button and finally Account Settings from the drop-down menu.

Click the file tab at the top, then the Account Settings button.

Step 2:

A new window will open up - here, click the Data Files tab, then Add... Navigate to the location of the .pst file on your hard drive and click ok to link up the archived mailbox.

The archived .pst file can be accessible by the mailbox-navigation tree panel on your Outlook (the left-most panel).

Click the Data Files tab, then Add...