Outlook - managing the order of multiple archive files

[StraightPipe]

Our office has a (retarded) policy of never deleting emails. I've setup archives and can keep their mail pst file around 500MB, but their archives grew up to 20GB quickly,which is apparently the limit for archives in Outlook 2003. So I started a second archive for this user.The user is asking me to change the order of his archive files.

Currently he has:

Email account
-inbox
-sent
-etc
Archive - I'm calling this "old"
-inbox 2005
-inbox 2006
-inbox 2007
-inbox 2008
-sent 2005
-sent 2006
-sent 2007
-sent 2008
Archive - I'm calling this "new"
-inbox 2009
-sent 2009

He wants:

Email Account
-inbox
-sent
-etc
Archive (new)
-inbox 2009
-sent 2009
Archive (old)
-inbox 2005
-inbox 2006
-inbox 2007
-inbox 2008
-sent 2005
-sent 2006
-sent 2007
-sent 2008

Basically he wants the new archive to be displayed 1st, and then the old archive...this makes sense, as he's much more likely to use the 2009 archive than the old stuff.

I've tried manipulating things a couple of different ways to change the order.

First i tried Data File Management, remove the old archive, then add the old archive. I figured that popping the old archive off the list then pushing it back on would swap the order...nope.

Then I tried renaming the archives, guessing they were listed alphabetically.
so the old archive was called archive.pst and the new was called archive 2 .pst, but i renamed the old to be archiveZZZ.pst. That didnt work either, still have the old at the top...

I also assumed that it may be because of the names of the folders in the archives, so i added folder "aaa" to the new archive. popped them both off, pushed the new one on, pushed the old one on....still no change.

the old pst file is still on top.

I'm going to try adding a new emails to the old pst next, maybe the order is related to the time stamp...idk. if that is the case every time i archive into his new mailbox, i'm going to have a problem with the order again.


Anybody know how the order of your archives PST files is controlled?

I've tried searching, but their is soo much crap explaining how to set up archives, i dont get any useful results.

HELP!!!

 

[Fardringle]

Outlook doesn't sort folders based on the name of the PST file. It uses the display name to determine the sort order. You can force the sorting order that you want a couple of ways. You can either put a punctuation mark (like a period) at the beginning of the display name of the newest Archive folder to force it to the top of the list, or you can change the old files to start with something other than Archive (like "old") to force them to the bottom of the list. I would personally use the period option but that's just my preference.

To change the display name of a folder, in the folder list in Outlook, right-click on the the archive name that you want to change and select the Properties option. Click on the Advanced button, then change the name as desired then click OK twice to save the changes.