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Summary: The ability to send other files as attachments to email is very useful, but also results in bloated email folders and in Outlook's case, PST files.
I started using Outlook in May 2006. I have a big pst file, about 3.6 gigabytes. I archived and am compacting, so that should work. My question is about attachments, are they part of the pst file size? When I get an attachment I want, I click on save as and save it outside Outlook. However, does the attachment then still remain in Outlook? Is there a way to delete attachments while still keep the body of the emails?
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Attachments are most definitely part of the PST file size. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that attachments are the number one cause of PSTs getting as big as they do.
And 3.6gig is a pretty big PST.
I have some cautions for you, and some steps you can take.
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All attachments and embedded graphics and formatting are stored as part of the individual email within which they happen to appear. So if you get a 5 word email message with a 100 megabyte attachment, that's a single mail message that's over 100 megabytes in size. Actually, because of the way that an attachment must be encoded as text, that 100 megabyte file might well take up 120 megabytes or more of space in the email message, and as a result in your PST.
Saving an attachment doesn't remove it from the message, and hence does not remove it from the PST.
When you save an attachment, all you're doing is:
converting the attached file from its textual email encoding back to its original form
saving that converted form to a new file
You haven't changed the email at all. All you've done is made and saved a copy of the attachment.
Which, by the way, is also what happens if you double click to run or execute the attachment - it's decoded, a copy is written to disk, and that copy is then run or otherwise acted on.
You can delete attachments from the email you've received, and therefore from your PST.
Since the attachment is part of the email message, what you'll do is modify the message. Open up the message containing the attachment you want to remove, right click on the attachment, and click on Remove. That's all there is to it.
After you've removed a few attachments, you won't see the PST get smaller right away. You'll either need to wait to let Outlook compact the PST itself, or force compaction manually.
Now, I can't let that "3.6gig" go without comment. That's a huge PST. I hope you're using the latest version of Outlook - or rather the later version of the PST file format - since older versions will have problems when PST's exceed 2gig. Even if you are using the proper version, that big a PST makes me very, very nervous. I would absolutely make sure that it's being backed up regularly, and I'd seriously consider breaking it into several smaller PSTs.
Related:
Ask Leo! - What can I do about Outlook's huge PST?
Ask Leo! - My PST has grown over 2gig, and now I can't repair it. What do I do?
Article C2947 - February 28, 2007
Leo,
Your reader asked "Is there a way to delete the attachments while still keeping the body of the email? Your answer is applicable to new emails, but what about the tens of thousands of emails that are already in the PST? The answer is an Outlook attachment management utility. There are programs that can extract (remove) all the attached files from an existing PST file and save them separately; there are programs that can automatically remove and save the attachment as new emails come in. In my opinion, the two best sources of such utilities are www.mapilab.com and www.slipstick.com.
Best Regards,
Posted by: Geoff Walker at March 3, 2007 2:13 PMGeoff Walker
I have lots of e-mails with zip files in Outlook 2003 - I've tried right clicking and choosing remove, but remove is greyed out. Is there any reason for this i.e. a security setting, as my PST is getting to the unreasonable size stage and I'd like to do something about it, preferably with 3rd party programs. Thanks, Emma
Posted by: Emma at August 8, 2007 6:32 AMI agree with the idea of deleting attachments to keep the PST small. However, what I would really like is that, when the attachment is deleted, a comment is still retained in the e-mail of the file name that had been attached originally. Just like it does when you reply to an e-mail in fact. Is this possible?
Posted by: Joan Edington at August 26, 2007 6:44 AMThanks,
Joan
Hi ,
Posted by: kavita at September 18, 2008 9:39 PMI am using my outlook from last 4 years I have so many pst I want to get only my all email from pst . can u tell me about it if any tool is available in online.