Yes, that's what archiving does: Moves old information from the designated folders into a .pst file.
To open a .pst file in Outlook, use the File | Open | Outlook Data file command. It will appear in the Folder List along with your other folders and can be used like any other folders. You might want to use the free Lookout search tool from Microsoft to index it if you plan to search it often.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx
"Tom Gordon" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Sue, thanks for the reply.
>
> Am I correct in understanding that the autoarchiving would move a lot
> of the messages out of the Offline folders and server and into one or
> more archive files?
> If that's true, that might be a good solution, except I've read
> somewhere that finding messages that have been archived is not exactly
> a user-friendly task. Can you give me a brief overview of how that
> process works? I'm mainly interested in the situation where I would be
> searching for an old note.
>