move inbox & merge archive folders?

[ny_dancer]

ALL of my folders are under archive folders, including my current
inbox. i also somehow have 4 different archive folders. i am using outlook
2k, running under winxp home. some of this is probably the result of having
done multiple wipe/installs, for whatever reason that seems to have resulted
in multiple archive folders.
i would like to: 1) move my current folders out of archives (inbox, sent
mail, subfolders, etc). & 2) merge all of my archive folders. any thoughts
would be welcome.
hmmmm...... as to merging the archives, i suppose if i could rename the
archive folders one by one, then move the contents to one big archive, then
delete the folders from which i had just moved the contents.... after making
suitable backups, of course. did i mention that i have archived mail going
back to 1999?

 

[DL]

Firstly if using OL2k there is a 2gb limit on a pst, allthough problems can
appear at 1.6gb ie it can become corrupt and in the worst case unreadable.
You can have as many archive files as you like, and they can all be open. An
archive is just a normal personal folder (pst) named archive.
An archive will, assuming mail meets the archive criteria, have the same
folder structure as the personal folder it is archiving. Thus it will
contain inbox/sent etc and unless you have edited your OL options in a weird
way your current mail will be delivered to the personal folder inbox and
sent to sent.
You can alter your archive settings to point to a specific archive.
Perhaps look here for more OL info
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm#Backup_pst-file