Personal Folders in Outlook: Creating and Opening

Personal folders are useful for storing mail on your hard drive within Outlook.  These directions show you how to create Personal folders. (If you are using  the Google@Wharton service, see: Backing Up Google@Wharton Account Data (Google Takeout Service) for directions on making a backup without using Outlook.)

Please note: These instructions will only work if you have Outlook configured to access your Wharton email.  This will not work if you are using Webmail, and any messages or other information you place in a personal folder won't be available to you when you use Webmail. 

Microsoft's Support site has excellent directions on managing personal folders.  Choose the version of Outlook you're using, and the level of support you want:

Outlook 2016, Outlook 365

Exporting Mail to a .pst file:

This includes all the calendars and data that is associated with the account. 

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Export-or-backup-email-contacts-and-calendar-to-an-Outlook-pst-file-14252b52-3075-4e9b-be4e-ff9ef1068f91

Creating Personal Folders:

Personal folders allow manual backing up, where the user can add selected data to backup. 

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-an-Outlook-Data-File-pst-to-save-your-information-17A13CA2-DF52-48E8-B933-4C84C2AABE7C

Suggestion: Store the .pst file on Onedrive or backup the file on other cloud services to ensure it is available in any situation.