When you graduate, or leave the University, you may want to take copies of your emails with you. Obviously this needs to be done prior to you leaving the University and certainly before your account is closed. This involves exporting your emails to a PST (Personal Storage Table) file. It is a relatively simple process, and length of time to complete will be dependent on the size of the emails you are exporting. Please note that the size of a .PST file (to which the emails will be copied) is limited to 50Gb. However, to prevent corruption of the file it may be better to stay well below this at around 20-30Gb.
Exporting your emails to .pst file
It is not feasible to back up emails from the Outlook Web App (Office 365). It is recommend that you configure your email account on the Outlook client, and then export them.
In Outlook go to the Files tab and select Open & Export. Then click on Import/Export.
In the Import and Export Wizard select Export to a File and click on Next.
Select Outlook Data File (.pst) and click on Next.
Select the folders that you wish to export from, and click Next. If you have a lot of emails it might be easier to create more than one .PST file and export the emails in groups.
Give the .pst file a name (i.e. Emails2020.pst) and browse to where you wish to save the file. Ensure that you make a note of the location so that you can access the file more quickly. By default the ‘Replace duplicates when items exported’ is selected. Change this to ‘Do not export duplication items’. However, you can use any of the options depending on what you want to do. Click Finish.
You now have the option of creating a password for the file. However, you must not forget the password otherwise you will no longer be able to access the file. If you do not want to set a password, click OK with the password fields blank.
The .pst file is now available from the location to which you saved it for you to copy to your own device for importing into your personal or new account.
Information on importing .pst files into different email providers varies, depending on how it has been set up, but can be found by searching on Google. However, if you are using Outlook as the application to view your mailbox, the information on importing a .pst file is the same as the above except you use the Import option.