Outlook search question

I am running Outlook 2010 - works great, no issues.

At the beginning of every year, I move the emails that are five+ years old into an archive file (which I typically keep closed). Occasionally, I want to look at these old emails, typically wanting to search for something. When I did this several months ago, I let the search index run and that took several hours. However, I figured it was worthwhile since the next time I opened the archive file and wanted to search for something, the search results would already exist.

I was wrong.

I tried searching the archive file today and nothing was indexed, i.e., it started indexing the .pst file. Question: Is there something I can do such that the search results are saved?

If you Right Click on a folder within the structure you can select properties and set the AutoArchive parameters and let Outlook do the work for you.

Great suggestion, but it does not seem to have changed Outlook's behavior. I moved everything in the archive file into one folder, set the parameter as you suggested, and let Outlook index everything. However, once I closed then re-opened the archive folder, it started indexing again...