Have you noticed that your company’s Microsoft Exchange emails have a retention policy that expires after a certain time frame? If you’re using Outlook, this means that your email messages will be deleted after that time frame and you won’t have access to them anymore. But fear not, because with a quick tutorial, you can learn how to download your emails to your laptop so that you can have access to them on an ongoing basis.
First, go to File, then Open & Export, then choose Import/Export. From there, choose to export to a file, and select Outlook data file (PST). Make sure to select all of your emails and include subfolders, and then click Next. You can filter your emails if you want to, but for this tutorial, we’re just going to download all of them so that we have access to them even after they’re expired from the company service.
Now, you’ll see a message about replacing duplicates with items exported. If you plan to do this on an ongoing basis, then select “allow duplicate items to be created.” This will only export non-duplicate items, and save you time in the long run. If you’re doing this for the first time, then you can select any option. Click Finish, and your emails will start exporting.
Depending on how many emails you have, it may take a while to export all of them. Once it’s finished, you’ll see that you now have a backup PST file of all your emails. You can open this file from Outlook by going to File, then Open & Export, then selecting Open Outlook Data File. Choose the PST file you just created and click OK, and now you have access to all your emails, even ones that have expired from the company service.
A quick note: if you have a lot of deleted items, it may take a while to export them. Going forward, it’s a good idea to empty out your deleted folders before exporting your emails.
With this tutorial, you can now save your emails in Outlook and have access to them even after they’re expired from the company service.