Me vs. Windows XP: Stop Outlook 2007 from auto-archiving and more

At work we use Microsoft Outlook. It's a pretty competent mail program although lightyears behind Apple Mail.

Disabling auto-archive in Outlook 2007

After a couple of weeks I noticed that Outlook did strange things to my old emails. They suddenly got a weird symbol and attachments could no longer be viewed. After some googling I found out that this was actually a feature called "auto-archive". I'm sure that it makes sense from a system administrator's perspective but for me as an end-user I suddenly had to open Internet Explorer and connect to the server to view old emails. Needless to say, it was really really really annoying. After some googling I found the answer.

So, if you like me find it a nuisance just:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Other (great name) -> Click the auto-archive button

there you uncheck the first check box and you shall be bothered no more.

Making your emails available offline

Ever since the upgrade to Outlook 2007 I haven't been able to access my emails offline. This too requires mastery of the treacherous Microsoft Outlook menu system.

To make Outlook 2007 download the mails from the server so that you can read them offline repeat the following step for each folder (haven't found a quicker way):

Go to Tools -> Send/Receive Setttings -> Click "Make available offline".

Then click Send/Receive and it will download your emails. Fantastic!