How to Create Personal Folders in Microsoft Outlook

One of the basic things any email Managing software needs to be able to do is organize the email into different folders. Microsoft Outlook allows you to have multiple folders in which you can put emails in. If you wanted to organize the emails in your Inbox, and put a bunch of them into an archive, you can do that with Personal Folders in Microsoft Outlook.

In order to create a personal folder in Microsoft Outlook, go to Tools -> Options to bring up the "Options" dialog box. Click on the "Mail Setup" tab. Press the "Data Files..." button to bring up the "Outlook Data Files" dialog box. Click on "Add" and select "Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst) in the "Types of storage:" list and hit "OK" to bring up the "Create or Open Outlook Data File" dialog box.

Now navigate to whatever directory you would like to create the personal folder and give it a name then hit "OK". This will bring up a box that asks you to name the folder (this is the name that will show up on the outlook pane on the left). You can also select other options like encryption and password in this box. After you are done, hit "OK". Then hit "Close" and "OK" on the remaining two open dialog boxes.

Now if you look in that pane on the left where you mailbox is, there will be a folder on the bottom with the label you gave it ("archive" for example).

You have just created a personal folder in Microsoft Outlook.

Now, you can move emails into this personal folder. In you inbox, hold CTRL and click on the emails you want to move into this personal folder. Once you have selected all the emails, right click on one of them and click "Move to Folder..." (or you could go to Edit -> Move to Folder...)

This will bring up all of your folders. Select the folder you just made, or any folder you want to move it to and hit "OK". This will move those emails from your inbox to that personal folder that you just created.

This makes it very easy when you want to archive some of your emails in Microsoft Outlook. You could create a personal folder called "Archive" and put all of your emails in there. (Tip: Try to limit the # of personal folders you have. If you ever want to transfer data, personal folders can be a nightmare! but that is a different topic)