In the first part of this tutorial, we have covered the Outlook Archive essentials. And now, it's time to learn a few techniques that go beyond the basics.
How to change the existing location of your Outlook archive
If for some reason you need to relocate your existing Outlook archive, simply moving the archived .pst file to a new folder will result in a new archive.pst file being created in the default location the next time your Outlook AutoArchive runs.
To move the Outlook archive properly, perform the following steps.
1. Close Archive in Outlook
To disconnect the Outlook Archive folder, right click on the root Archive folder in the list of folders, and click Close Archive.
Tip. If the Archives folder does not appear in your list of folders, you can find its location via File > Account Settings > Account Settings > Data Files tab, select the archived .pst file, and click the Remove button. This will only disconnect the archive from your Outlook, but won't delete the archived .pst file.
2. Move the archive file to where you want it.
Close Outlook, browse to the location of your archived .pst file, and copy it to the folder of your choosing. Once your Outlook archive is copied, you can delete the original file. Though, a safer way would be rename it to archive-old.pst and keep until you've made sure that the copied file is working.
3. Reconnect the moved archive.pst file
To reconnect the archive file, open Outlook, click File > Open > Outlook Data File…, browse to the new location of your archive file, select the file and click OK to connect it. The Archives folder will immediately show up in your list of folders.
4. Change your Outlook Auto Archive settings
The last but not the least step is modifying the AutoArchive settings so that from now on Outlook will move old items to the new location of your archived .pst file. Otherwise, Outlook will create another archive.pst file in the original location.
To do this, click File > Options > Advanced > AutoArchive Settings…, make sure the Move old items to radio button is selected, click the Browse button and point it to where you moved your Outlook archive file.