Creating a PST in Outlook 2010

The Credit of the this post goes to: The Sean Blog

Here is the step-by-step guide to create a PST file in Outlook 2010. It’s pretty much the same as in Outlook 2007.

In the top left of Outlook, click on “File”.

Click on the Account Settings drop down, and then click “Account Settings…”

In the window that pops up, click the second tab “Data Files”

Click on the “Add…” icon, and then give your PST file a name (they call it “Outlook Data File, which makes much more sense to end users), choose where it goes, and then hit “OK”.  By default in Windows 7, it goes into your My Documents folder into a folder called “Outlook Files”.

I’m not sure what Outlook 2010 does on earlier versions of Windows, but Outlook 2007 and earlier defaulted to C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.  I know that because I used to have a job upgrading PC’s in a large enterprise to Windows XP, and I had to manually move over the PST files that people forgot to back up.  That path is burned into my brain :)

Close the Account Settings window, and you will be back to the main Outlook window.  Your new PST (Outlook Data File) will be over on the left, and you can create new folders and drag mail into them (or setup rules).

Source of the post: The Sean Blog

Outlook Desktop Notification Tool Tip

As some, if not all, of you have experienced, the Outlook notification does not come up if you have set up Rules/Filters to go into folders (vs the Inbox).

In order to turn them back on, the “Display Desktop Alert” action must be explicitly set for a Rule.

Steps to turn this on:

1. Go to Tools->”Rules and Alerts…”

2. Choose the rule you would like to modify and click on Change Rules->”Edit Rule Settings…”

3. Click on the Next button and in the “Select action(s)” step (after Select Condition), scroll down and check on “Display a Desktop Alert”.

I have not spent the time yet on finding out how to turn this attribute on globally or modify all rules to have a certain attribute set so feel free to share if you know or discover how to. For now, I had to set it manually for each rule. :(