My problems all started when I upgraded to MS Office 2007. While the upgrade all went smoothly, I started noticing that Outlook was running slower and slower and slower. Then I started getting messages that Outlook hadn’t shut down properly and the pst file needed to be checked for errors. This was happening every time I opened Outlook. I was definately shutting everything down properly each time I used it so it was confusing.

I had about three years worth of email in there and my default pst file was huge. I did some maintenance and created three new pst files to sort the mail into, including an Archive. After moving a tonne of emails across to their new pst files and deleting a tonne more I ran a compact on the default pst.

No luck with the error message though. To be on the safe side I ran the Archive function to archive anything older than two weeks ago and thus clear the default pst up more. I ran a compact again and also a repair. Still no luck getting rid of the error message. I was beginning to suspect it had something to do with the Windows Desktop Search software.

The next day Outlook refused to open. A repair of the pst file produced no results. Thankfully by doing the archive when I did I only lost two weeks of mail. Everything else was safely tucked away in the new pst files. I did lose all my contacts and calendar, but I can rebuild them by syncing my pda.

Needing to get into my email straight away, I jumped onto my Gmail account and set all my other mail accounts to deliver there as a temporary work around. You know what? It worked really well! I was so impressed that I’ve left it this way. I can now check my email from any web-enabled computer or my mobile phone and it’s all in one spot.

This leaves me with the problem of no backups though, so tonight I did a bit of web surfing on the topic. I found a few solutions out there, but was surprised that for something so important there wasn’t more available.

Some of the solutions I found were:

Backing up your Gmail to Google Groups

• Google Tutor has a very detailed article on using Google Groups to backup Gmail.
• The Google Tutor article was also featured on LifeHack.org and TechnoBuzz.net.

Backing up your Gmail for Unix/Linux/BSD/Mac OS X users

• George Donnelly has a great how to guide on backing up your Gmail daily on a *nix machine using getmail and a cron job.

Backing up your Gmail with a 3rd Party Tool

• I was surprised at how few dedicated tools I could locate. The one I did find is called G-Archiver from MateMedia. I did not try this, although it looks like it would do the trick. A freeware version is available that will allow you to archive up to 50 messages. A single user licence for the full version is currently $29.95.

Backing up your Gmail to a POP3 Client

This is the solution that I ultimately went with, mainly because I already own Outlook (and it’s been functioning fine since I turned Windows Desktop Search off and created a new pst file). It also seemed like the simplest solution and would work with any POP3 mail client.

• Google themselves have instructions on how to set this up at the Google Apps Help Centre – How do I backup all my mail using POP access?
• Chris Brogan also has a great post on how to do this – Back up your gmail. He makes an important suggestion to then move a copy of the subsequent data file from your mail client to an offline backup, something I’ll definately be doing!