Archive vs. Backup?

[Guest]

I've poked around various discussion groups and am still unclear as to the
differences between archive versus backup functions.

While I currently am archiving my Outlook files do I also need to Backup as
well?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

With thanks in advance,

Dbm

 

[Diane Poremsky]

archive applies to older messages - moving them to a new folder while backup
makes a copy of your current folders, including all new messages.

IMHO, backup is much more important than archiving.

 

[Guest]

I get the impression archiving helps with mail and calender handling speed as
well.

I'll start using the backup feature to my outboard hard drive as well.

Thank you very much for your help.

Dbm

 

[Diane Poremsky]

it does, but only if you have a lot of items in either. A thousand
appointments or email messages is not going to slow outlook down. 5000
might.. 10000 can.

If you use Outlook 2002 or older, archiving helps keep the pst below the 2
GB mark - outlook 2003 with Unicode format pst can grow to unlimited sizes.