How to store email offline

If you online email box is filling up, you can store email on your PC (or in OneDrive by creating a PST file and moving email you need to archive to that file.

Creating a PST

PST stands for “Personal STore” where “store” is short for “storage”. In plainer English, a PST file is a file on your computer into which you can store email messages and more. It’s where we want to store the email we want to move offline.

To create a PST file, click on the File menu and then on the Account Settings button.

Then click on the Account Settings… command that appears in the drop-down menu.

This will bring up an Account settings.  Click on the Data Files tab.

Click on the Add… button.

This will open a traditional file Open dialog. Navigate to the folder on your machine where you want the data file stored. It’s OK to accept the default, but I like to have a little more say in where things go.

In this example, I’ve navigated to my own folder — c:\stuff — and will name my PST folder MyLocalEmail.

Since the file doesn’t exist, it’ll be created. (You would go through this same process if you wanted to open a PST file you already had.)

Hit Close on the Account settings dialog, and you’re done.

Using your PST

Your newly created PST will appear underneath your accounts in the left-hand navigation pane.

Right-click on it, click on New folder, and give the folder a name.

You can name your folders whatever you like, and you can have multiple folders and sub-folders — whatever suits your organizational plans.

Now to move some email.

Moving email from online to offline

Click and hold on one or more messages in your Inbox; then drag and drop them to the folder in your local PST.

In the example above, I’ve clicked and held on “Mail to myself 1”, and am in the process of dragging and dropping it onto my “Stuff I Want To Save” folder. The result is that the message is moved to my local folder.

Since it’s a move, the following has happened:

• The message was copied into the “Stuff I Want To Save” folder in the PST file I created on my machine.
• The message was then deleted from my account’s Inbox, removing it from the online account. (Depending on the email provider, it may remain in trash online for some time.)

You’ve moved your message from online to offline. It is now available only via this PST file on your PC, and it is no longer taking up storage space in your online account.

Original instructions can be found here:  How Do I Save Emails Locally in Outlook? - Ask Leo!