The Archive button creates a simple workflow:

Hit Backspace, a message is moved to the Archive folder. It’s a one-click option to clear mail from the Inbox without deleting it. The Archive button moves an email message to a folder named “Archive.” That’s it. Some of you may decide it’s your new best friend. The Archive button appeared a couple of years ago without any fanfare and, I’ll be damned, it’s pretty useful. You haven’t noticed it because we have trained ourselves for twenty years to let our eyes slide over anything in Outlook that we don’t use. Mailboxes connected via POP/IMAP have more flexibility with the Archive folder.Īny existing folder can be selected as the archive destination or make a new folder (any name) and nominate that as your archive destination.Outlook has an Archive button, right next to the Delete button.

That’s not directly possible now but there are workarounds that we’ll look at separately. It was probably necessary to maintain compatibility across all the different Outlook programs and apps.īut it’s also shame, because some people make different Archive folders for each year. We’re now stuck with a single Archive folder and that name.

Microsoft dropped the Archive folder choice option during an update to Outlook 2016. If you’re interested the feature was at Account | Tools | Set Archive Folder but that now only works for non-Microsoft mailboxes. You could create a new folder with whatever name you like and change the ‘archive’ folder to that folder. All those folders have fixed names which can’t be changed.įor a while there was a workaround in Outlook 2016 for Windows. In modern Outlook with Microsoft hosted mailboxes (, Office 365 hosted or recent Exchange Server) the Archive folder is an in-built folder like Inbox, Sent Items etc. But non-Microsoft mailboxes can rename Archive to anything maybe ‘Miscellaneous’, ‘Store’ or just ‘Old Stuff’. For many mailboxes it’s not possible to rename the Outlook Archive folder.

Mac mail archive folder missing