My work e-mailbox is hosted on an Exchange server and is very limited in size (only 100 MB) so I use a PST file to archive mail when it’s full. This has of course several disadvantages such as possible corruption on the PST and some limitations. I open my mailbox from severals places: Outlook on my laptop, Outlook Web Access remote (no PST available in OWA), Outlook from my Virtual Desktop (no PST since it’s located on my laptop) and so on.

Then I got the idea to create a seperate GMail account and use that for archiving. I added the new account as IMAP mailbox in Outlook and create some folders & subfolders in it:

Of course we can simply drag mails into the desired folder. The nice thing is that when you access GMail through the web the folders are visible as Labels:

Searching through archived mails can be done with GMail’s search functionality or Outlook’s.

So now I can access my archive everywhere and open it concurrently.

Some helpfull links:

• IMAP – GMail help
• Outlook 2007 – GMail help
• Outlook 2003 – GMail help
• Recommended Client Settings – GMail help