Email Backup : Essential Habit for MS Outlook Users

Emails are precious asset for an organization due to being responsible for containing bulks of business related information, such as privacy, business plans, processes, client relation management etc. Backup is preventive mechanism to make data safer and reliable. Now days, any smart application is enabled with adequate mechanism to handle such cases. It is the best strategy to protect your data against any unfavorable conditions.

Microsoft Outlook is heavily used in organizations for email exchange and for performing many other tasks. Know that Outlook uses PST (Personal Storage Table) file to store all the data, including email messages, contacts, appointments, calendar entries, and other data items. Therefore, in order to back up email or other information in Outlook, you need to take a full backup of PST file. The post provides all essential steps to perform the PST file backup task. See below to know.

Step 1: Close all the running messaging applications, such as MS Exchange, Windows Live Messenger, etc.

Step 2: Click on 'Start', and then click 'Run'.

Step 3: Type 'control panel' in the box and then press Enter to open the control panel. If it shown you 'Pick a category' screen, select 'User Accounts', and then go to the next step.

Step 4: Double-click the 'Mail' icon.

Step 5: Click on 'Show Profiles'.

Step 6: Click the profile from where you need to pick PST to take a backup, and then click 'Properties'.

Step 7: Click on 'Data Files'.

Step 8: Click 'Personal Folders Service' that has to be backed up under 'Name'. This service is Personal Folders by default; however, it may have some other name too. Note that if your profile contains more Personal Folders Service in your profile, you need to back up all sets of .pst file individually. If there is no Personal Folders entry and there is no information stored, such as contacts, appointments, messages, etc., it is possible that you have not enabled Personal Folders Service. If Personal Folders Services is not available, you can store the information, such as messages, appointments, contacts, etc., in Outlook.

Step 9: Click on 'Settings' and note the file name and path that appears. Note that since PST files contain all the information, it many become huge; therefore, consider reducing its size by using 'Compact Now' functionality of Outlook.

Step 10: Close all 'Properties' windows.

Step 11: Copy the file that you noted earlier by using My Computer or Windows Explorer. You can also copy the file on an external drive, another location of the internal drive, CD/DVD, floppy disk, USB drive, etc.

This is how you can accomplish the task. However, note that the procedure will help you when your Outlook data file is not located on the Exchange server. If you want to back up a PST file on an Exchange Server, it will not provide the expected results.

Besides, in some cases, you may notice that the procedure does not provide the expected results, and hence you do not have a single backup copy of Outlook PST. In such failure events, simply opt for an external mail backup software program.