“I have Microsoft Outlook 2007. It runs an automatic pst backup. When it does, my computer slows down. Can you turn off the back up from Outlook?”

Outlook doesn’t have an automatic backup feature built-in, at least not what I’d call a backup. If you back something up, you are making a copy of your data. The copy can be used to recover data if the original becomes corrupted or fails. Outlook does have a feature call AutoArchive, which is turned on by default. AutoArchive moves email messages from the Outlook PST file to an Archive PST file based on how old the email messages are. If you want to turn off AutoArchive, the steps are fairly straightforward.

With Outlook open, go to Tools > Options on the menu and click on the Other tab. Next, click the AutoArchive button to open Outlook AutoArchive settings.

To turn off AutoArchive, simply uncheck the box next to Run AutoArchive every…

You can also configure AutoArchive to prompt you before archiving your messages, which allows you to postpone when AutoArchive moves messages from your primary PST file to an Archive PST file. Keep in mind that this is not a backup of your PST, it simply keeps your main PST file smaller, which in theory helps Microsoft Outlook to run quickly.