Personal Folders
Personal Folders in Outlook/Exchange
November 16, 2001
Personal Folders are an important part of Outlook/Exchange. And if you constantly run into problems with Exchange Quotas, you’ll really need this tip. Personal Folders are used to save email and other Outlook items and are usually kept on the Y: drive. They’re not part of your Exchange Space, so moving items from Exchange Space to a Personal Folders, reduces the total Exchange Space size. You access Personal Folders items much like Exchange items, and you can move items from Personal Folders back to Exchange.
When a Personal Folders is kept on the Y drive it is accessible from office, home, or wherever, and the Y drive gives added security through password protection and back up.
But Personal Folders are not well designed for collaborative sharing. Items that you need to share with someone else should be in the Exchange area. And if you are likely to need items in Outlook Web Access, keep them in Exchange—Personal Folders are not accessible in the current version of OWA. Personal folders give you more storage space than you have in Exchange, but there is a limit. A good rule of thumb is to keep the size under 300MB. If you do have problems with a Personal Folders, and this is very rare, we can apply a utility that has a success rate of greater than 90%.
Here’s how to create a new Personal Folders:
1. On “File” menu, click “New”, then “Personal Folders File (.pst)…”
In the “File name” box, type a name for the storage drive file or leave it as is.
2. In the “Save in” box select the storage drive location. Normally the location will be the “Outlook” folder in your Y: drive folder. CAUTION: You will probably see “Outlook” in the “Save in” box, but it is probably not the correct folder. Use the pulldown list to select the Y: drive, then find your folder and then the “Outlook” folder within that. Now click “CREATE.”
3. In the “Name” box, type an Outlook display name of your choice or leave it as “Personal Folders.” (This name will appear in Outlook on your Folder List or Outlook Bar.)
4. Ignore “Encryption Setting.” (We don’t recommend a password, but you may if you wish. A password can be up to 15 characters. If you select the “Save this password in your password list” check box, make a note of the password.) Now click “OK”
The Outlook name of the Personal Folders appears in the “Folder List.” To view Folder List, from the “View” menu, click “Folder List.”
Note that there is a sub-folder called “Deleted Items” within Personal Folders. When you delete items within a Personal Folders, the items are moved to this “Deleted Items” folder. Unlike the “Deleted Items” folder in Exchange when you empty the Personal Folders Deleted Items folder, the items are gone forever.
Let’s use the Personal Folders. Just drag any item (file or folder) from your current Exchange folders to the new Personal Folders. . Dragging items moves them. You must move items to the Personal Folder in order to reduce your Exchange Space. Pressing “CTRL” while dragging copies items. Copying items will not reduce your Exchange Space. Most likely you will want to move email items to Personal Folders rather than calendar or contact items because it is email items that take up the most space.
And you can move items out of the Personal Folders back into the Exchange world.
We’ll continue the topic of Personal Folders in our next tip. We invite you to browse our web page for Outlook Exchange Tips ( support.bumc.bu.edu ) and we thank you for joining us. Any comments or questions are welcome.
