Solved Saving Outlook folders

ElizabethW · Jun 29, 2022

Good Day.

I am running Microsoft 365 on a Windows 11 machine.

I have a particular Outlook folder containing several hundred messages and several subfolders. The messages relate to a volunteer position that I held for several years that has now been taken over by a new person.

I need to transfer the entire folder to the new volunteer, preferably on a USB stick in a form that they can read.

Can anyone tell me how I might do this?

I cannot purchase any third-party software.

Regards

Elizabeth

RFS · Jun 29, 2022

Outlook has the ability to export data to a file that can be imported into another account. I would suggest going into the help section and search on "export". It contains there relevant details of how to achieve what you need.

Starting point is to click on the "file" option top left of the ribbon, and select the import/export option from "open and export".

ElizabethW · Jun 29, 2022

Thank you for your reply.

I should have mentioned in my original post that I have already tried what you have suggested.

It appears that this method cannot be used to export/import a single folder - only the entire contents of the Outlook account can be exported to/from a single .pst file.

And in any case, a .pst file would not be readable by my replacement without their use of Outlook - I was hoping to get the messages to them as plaintext (.pdf, for example) if at all possible.

Thank you anyway for trying to help.

Regards.

glasskuter · Jun 29, 2022

According to this MS article, it can export a single folder. Back up your email

Dru2 · Jun 29, 2022

ElizabethW said:
I need to transfer the entire folder to the new volunteer, preferably on a USB stick in a form that they can read.

Can anyone tell me how I might do this?

As one who has done this a few times and uses Outlook 365, this video shows how to do what you want (also glasskuter's link)...

So, in summery…

File, Open and Export. Next
Choose Outlook Data File (.pst). Next
Select the folder you want to export. Next
Check “Include subfolders” box if necessary. Next
Chose location for file and name it. Next
Under Options choose an option (or leave at default). Click Finish
When you click Finish, decide on password or not. Click ok regardless of choice.
You are now done and can pass the file along.

In case your replacement need inport instructions - How to import a pst file into Outlook

Import email, contacts, and calendar from an Outlook .pst file - Microsoft Support

Import all of your Outlook email, contacts, or calendar events that you saved to a .pst so you can view them in Outlook.

support.microsoft.com

ElizabethW · Jun 29, 2022

Thank you Dru2.

I followed the steps that you provided above.

As a test I then opened the resulting .pst file in Outlook, only to discover that there seemed to be no messages in it or any of the subfolders, in spite of the file size showing as 278MB, which is too large to attach here.

I used a free .pst viewer to check the file and the messages are all there alright.

Do you have any idea where I went wrong?

Regards

Mike

Dru2 · Jun 29, 2022

ElizabethW said:
I used a free .pst viewer to check the file and the messages are all there alright.

You need to check the file inside of Outlook, not use some third-party app as they won't work. And if the file is showing a size of 278 meg, there's obviously something there. Simply import the file back into Outlook as a pst file as shown in the video and view from there.