How to set the Archive settings in Outlook

Outlook has a default setting –

For ‘Inbox’ within ‘Mailbox’, emails are not automatically archived into ‘Archive folders’.

For ‘Sent Items’ within ‘Mailbox’, emails older than 6 months are automatically archived into ‘Sent Items’ within ‘Archive folders’, if you click on ‘Yes’ when you see the prompt every 14 days. Emails which are archived are deleted from Exchange Server immediately, and saved on the local machine, thus those spaces are released on the Exchange Server. (‘6 months’ and ’14 days’ can be changed, if staff like to, by clicking on the ‘Default Archive Settings…’ button.)

To solve the staff’s 2GB limit problem, we could ask our staff to also enable automatic archiving for ‘Inbox’ within ‘Mailbox’ by doing this -

In Outlook, right-click on ‘Inbox’ within ‘Mailbox’, select ‘Properties’. An ‘Inbox Properties’ dialogue box will show up.  Choose the ‘AutoArchive’ tab. Select ‘Archive items in this folder using the default settings’, and click on ‘OK’. Similarly, staff can choose to change ‘6 months’ and ’14 days’ by clicking on the ‘Default Archive Settings…’ button.

When prompted to archive old emails every 14 days, staff should click on ‘Yes’.

An alternative approach is – our staff can drag some old emails from the ‘Inbox’ within ‘Mailbox’ into the ‘Inbox’ within ‘Archive folders’. Those spaces will be released on the Exchange server.