Archiving has always resulted in a lot of confusion because Outlook archives items based on the last modified date, which may or may not be the same as the received (or start, completed date). This works well, for the most part, unless you import messages or edit older messages, which changes the last modified date. If you wanted to archive by the received date (or start, or completed date) you either needed to move the mail yourself (move, not copy, or the modified date changes!) or use a 3rd party archiving tool.

This hasn’t changed in Outlook 2010 RTM, as the default for archiving Outlook items use either the received/competed/start date or the modified date, whichever is later. The modified date is the received date or the completed date, unless you do something that affects the modified date after receiving a message or marking a task complete. Import & Export, copying, and editing items are among the things that will change the modified date.

However, this all changes with the April 26 2011 hotfix. The hotfix introduces the ArchiveIgnoreLastModifiedTime registry setting, which allows you to use the received, start, or completed dates only.

This also supported by a hotfix in Outlook 2007 released in December 2010.

After installing the hotfix, you need to add the following value to the registry (Outlook 2010):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Preferences
DWORD Value: ArchiveIgnoreLastModifiedTime
Value data: 1

In Outlook 2007, you’ll edit

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences

With this value set to 1, you’ll archive based on the received, completed, or end date of an Outlook item:

Email message: uses the received date.
Calendar item: uses the actual date that an appointment, event, or meeting is scheduled for.
Task: uses the completed date. Note that Tasks that are not marked as completed are not archived, and Tasks that are assigned to other users are archived only if the status is completed.
Note: uses the last modified date and time.
Journal entry: uses the date the journal entry was created.

Note that Contacts are never archived in any version of Outlook.

Using AutoArchive to Delete Junk Email

Everyone loves Outlook 2003′s new junk email filter, but they don’t like emptying the junk email folder, yet they can’t risk allowing Outlook to delete all messages marked as junk as the messages arrive. While right clicking on the folder and choosing “Delete Junk email” takes but a second, as long as you don’t mind having some junk email around for a couple of days, you can set up AutoArchive to delete older junk email on a schedule.

By choosing to delete only the messages older than a couple of days or so and running AutoArchive every 1-4 days, you’ll have time to browse the junk email folder for misdirected messages. While I recommend keeping junk email for up to a week to give you time to look for misdirected messages, you can select any period down to 1 day and have 2 days to check for misdirected mail.

To set up autoarchiving, right click on the Junk email folder and choose Properties, then the AutoArchive tab. Select Archive this folder using these settings and choose a Clean out items older than time period. When configuring AutoArchive on Junk E-mail, you’ll want to select Permanently delete old items since you don’t want the junk mail moved to an archive folder. Click Apply. If you don’t have a global AutoArchive setting configured, Outlook will warn you and set it for the default of 14 days.

To change the AutoArchive setting so that it runs more often than 14 days, open Tools, Options, Other tab and click the AutoArchive button. Select your desired time period, down to 1 day. Note that unless you explicitly enable a folder for AutoArchive or pressed the button to Apply the setting to all folders, only the folders you configured for AutoArchive will be processed when AutoArchive runs.

You can use this same method to permanently delete items from the Deleted Items folder instead of emptying it when you close Outlook. This allows Outlook to close a bit faster and gives you a chance to recover accidentally deleted messages.

Automatically Empty Deleted Item Folder using Auto-Archive

Open the AutoArchive dialog by going to Tools, Options, Other, AutoArchive. Enable AutoArching every 14 days. The default is 14 days, but you’ll probably want to lower it to 5 or less days. You can leave the other settings the default, but note that if you click the ‘Apply these settings to all folders’ button, it will apply the settings to all folders, including calendar or any folder you may store old important messages in. You’ll need to disable autoarchiving or change the archive period on these folders individually.

Next, right click on the Deleted Items folder and choose Properties, then AutoArchive tab. Choose the option to ‘Archive this folder using these settings’ and pick a number. My preference is to set AutoArchive to run every 2 to 3 days and delete items older than 2 or 3 days. This provides some insurance, should I need to recover something from either folder.

For more information, see How to Automatically Empty Deleted Item Folder

Articles that may interest you:

Macro to Move Aged Email Messages

Exporting to create a backup archive

How to solve the PST Backup headache

How to read items archived using AutoArchive

Last reviewed on Sep 29, 2011