The Personal Folders file (.pst) of Microsoft Outlook is one of the most important files on your computer that stores offline copies of all your email messages, calendar appointments, contacts, tasks and other Outlook items. [PST = Personal Storage Table]

Whether you download emails from Gmail Inbox to Outlook or sync Google Calendar with Outlook Calendar, everything gets saved in a PST file on your hard drive. It is therefore extremely important that you regularly backup your Outlook PST files so as not to lose any data in the event of a computer crash.

Though you can create a backup copy of your Outlook .pst files using the Import and Export wizard in Outlook, that’s slightly cumbersome and puts some pressure on your memory since it’s for you to remember the date when you have run the same backup process again.

To save you from this backup stress, Microsoft has a free Outlook add-in called Personal Folders Backup that works with all versions of Outlook and weighs just 160 kb.

This tool can backup all your PST files in a single click and will automatically remind you to perform a backup after ‘x’ number of days. The same tools can also be used to restore Outlook data from previous backups.

The Personal Folders Backup tool has been available since long but the new version that’s released today includes support for Outlook 2007.

Related: Export Outlook PST mails to Gmail