Ever find yourself wanting to copy emails from one Outlook account to another? Say maybe someone moves on to another job and you want to keep a record of what's been done, or your company is reorganised and departmental emails need to be seperated up.

If you've ever tried to do this in Outlook 2003 you'll have been banging your head against a wall trying to figure it out. It may be that newer version of Office provide this function automatically but many offices do not upgrade to the latest Office software regularly. For that reason, here's a step by step guide to save you half an hour of your life.

Getting the To Account Ready

First up, we're assuming you have the email account you're copying the emails to already set up and ready to take them. This account is going to be labeled to, the account you're copying the emails from will be labeled from.

Secondly, it is going to look as though we're doing this backward. But you need to do this the "wrong" way around otherwise it gets a lot more complicated. Seriously.

1. Log in under the account you're copying the emails TO.
2. In the folder list (on the right hand side) right click on the name of the account at the top where it says: Mailbox Last Name, First Name.
3. Select "Sharing"
4. Click Add and select the name of the account you're copying the emails FROM
5. Once added, select the name in the list and select "Owner" from the Permission Level list.
6. Click OK to close this box.

Setting up the From Account

The account you are copying the emails to is now set up to receive them. If the permissions are set up correctly the from account can copy folders to the to account.

1. Log in under the account you're copying the emails FROM
2. On the top menu bar, click Tools, then Email Accounts
3. View or change existing email accounts should be selected. Click next.
4. On the next window "Microsoft Exchange Server" should be selected. Click Change
5. On the next window click More Settings
6. On the next window click the tab named Advanced
7. Next to where it says "Open these additional mailboxes" click Add
8. Enter the name of the TO mailbox in the format Last Name, First Name
9. Click OK to return to the previous menu.
10. Click Next, then Finish to exit.

The TO email account should now appear in your folder list on the left hand side of the screen. If you click on it you should be able to see the Inbox although you may not be able to see any other folders - that doesn't matter (it's the reason we're doing it the "wrong" way around).

Moving Your Emails

To copy the folders from the FROM mailbox to the TO one just drag them across from one account to the other. It should move them (i.e. removing the originals) automatically although you may need to do this seperately.

Because you can't drag the Inbox folder across itself, you'll need to copy the messages out of the folder seperately. Simply select the folder on your FROM account and drag them across.

If you can't see the Sent Items in the TO mailbox you will not be able to drag the emails straight across. In this case create an extra folder on the FROM account - named Sent Items for example - and copy the emails into there. Once you log back in as the TO user you can move them across to Sent Items as normal.

Simple as that. OK, it isn't simple at all!

Learn more about this author, Martin Fitzpatrick.
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