Windows 7: Archiving in Live Mail 2011

How do I "archive" mail messages in WLM 2011? I'm pretty sure I don't mean "export" but if thats my only option, please explain. In the past, (windows mail in vista) I could actually "archive" (remove from the current view, by date) and clean up my huge inbox. I could select the date range, (don't want to get rid of current messages, etc) and archive them to an easy to find and sort through folder I labeled by date. I can NOT figure out how to do this in 2011. I tried the "export" but it didn't ask me a date question, and just started to take off. I hit cancel immediately. No idea what messages it "exported" or how it selected them. Was it going to "export" the whole inbox, and then I just "delete" some older ones to get them out of my current inbox? Thanks!!!!

Why not just create a folder and store them there. It could be a subfolder under "Storage Folders" called "Old Inbox".

That's actually a great question. I guess I "assumed" that the folder view, on the left side of Mail, was similar to looking at your C drive in Windows Explorer. Meaning while all my data is in "folders" its really still on the C drive, vs "moving" the data to another drive. I thought that all the "folder" views in Mail, were still "there." Granted, not still in my "inbox" but still part of my mail environment that I open, and close, and deal with. While I don't have real performance issues, usually twice or so a year, I liked to "purge" (i.e. archive) my "mail environment" so that it didn't take as long to open, looked cleaner, etc. Are you saying that putting emails in a "storage" folder actually "stores" them somewhere ELSE, and NOT in my "main mail file" or whatever you call it? If so, then yes, that's a perfect solution, since the "storage folder" view is always available, and would make trying to find an older email very efficient indeed. Thanks!

Yeah...I am interested in this too. If I could sort my mails (year-wise) in sub-folders and leave current mail in the Inbox it would be excellent. But as "dbryant11" asks, would this make WLM load faster? How about searches through past mails in said storage folders - how would that work?

Thanks

The "Storage Folders" are part of the mail program so they won't help you remove the old mail from WLM. There may be a way to selectively export messages (perhaps by grouping them first) for later import and then delete them from your inbox and deleted items folder.

I use a backup facility (daily) to backup my mail - called Winmail Backup 2. This file can be restored back to a Winmail system within any user profile. What I have done is to backup the full system at a given point in time e.g. end of period/year.

1st Method - not ideal but manageable
Set up another USER on the PC and restore this file to Windows Live Mail (set for off-line use only). Subsequent archives - use 2nd Method below but restoring within this user profile or another user profile, etc

2nd Method - Messy
Restore the file to a specific folder within your user profile and 'swop' to this folder within Windows Live Mail (Maintenance tag) for when you want to refer to archived messsages (don't forget to switch to off-line usage first as new messages will keep arriving. Swop back whne finished.

Whichever method is used, you will still need to manually purge mail from folders, which being under your control can be by folder, by date, by user, etc.

Have fun!