AutoArchive/Mailbox Cleanup - Outlook 2003

[Mike]

I recently installed Outlook 2003 (I have always used Outlook, every
version) and finally decided to allow IT to do some message cleanup. I have
hundreds upon hundreds of emails going back almost a year. Many are in
specially created folders to categorize them. I have right clicked on
assorted folders and set individual AutoArchive properties as needed, in
addition to the global setting.

When I click on Tools > Mailbox cleanup, it seems that the first couple
items don't do squat. If I click the radio button next "Find items older
than 90 days" and click Find, it finds exactly two items. I have hundreds
of mails that are older than 90 days. My inbox has emails going back to May
2003. If I click on the AutoArchive button in this dialog, it doesn't do
anything. Not one item is "archived" though my archive setting is to delete
the items.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of Outlook, I ran across something (sorry,
can't remember where or more than that) that makes me think it's looking at
the "Modified" date of an item and not the received date. If I do a search
based on modified date, I get the same sort of results as the cleanup
routines... nada. However if I look for received date, it works as I would
expect it to work. It finds tons of old stuff.

What's the deal here? How do I get AutoArchive to do something?

 

[Mike]

What's the deal here? How do I get AutoArchive to do something?

As it turns out, it DOES appear to be a "Modified" date problem that is
preventing autoarchiving. When I recently upgraded to Outlook 2003, it
apparently set all the message modified dates to nothing. When I added the
"Modified" date column to my folders, all messages that existed at the time
of my upgrade have a modified date of "None". All after that have a normal
date.

Anyway to fix this short of going into each folder and doing a manual
cleanup?

 

[DL]

I believe I read of an addin/third party tool, perhaps a google search might
reveal something.
I do recollect that to keep the modified date when converting OE to OL you
export from OE rather than Import in OL.
If you have backup of the origonal pst you may be able to open this in OL
but since I believe OL03 uses a different pst mail format to earlier
versions I'm not sure as to if you can open without converting and thus
probably resetting modified date
Hope my ramblings may be of some help
David

 

[Mike]

Thanks, David. I'll try searching for a tool to help me out. OE was not
even in the picture here and I did not import or anything like that. Simply
upgrading to 2003 (from 2002) must have needed to convert the format of the
pst. I don't think bringing in a backup would be any different because it's
in the older version.

mike

 

[DL]

I realise OE wasnt in the picture I merely mentioned it regarding an
illistration of changing of modified date when importing
David