What can I do about Outlook's huge PST?

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It should also be noted that the second most common cause of large personal folders file is the number/size of items in the 'Sent Items' folder. This is especially problematic if you frequently send large attachments. To reduce the size of the 'Sent Items' folder you can either delete some, or all, of the email in the folder, or you can open any email that has a large attachment, click on the attachment, and hit the Delete key. This will remove the attachment but keep the email. You should obviously be careful if you need to keep the attachment but don't have it saved locally. You could always save the attachment somewhere on your computer and remove the attachment from the email too.

HTH

A new PST created with 2003 will not have the limit. If you simply move your old PST to 2003 (as I did), it will still have the limit as the format is not changed.

I have a main Microsoft pst file that have reached the 2GB limit. This folder have emails since 2002 with many sub-folders. The user want to keed all emails and attachments that comes with some emails.

I was able to create five archive files each contain about a year of emails. Eg archive_2002, archive_2003 etc. I was able to do this by using Archive option in Microsoft Outlook 2000.

What I have notice that in some archive file it contain wrong data. for example, archive_2003 will contain emails from 2002 or 2004. Also, I've notice that some sub-folders was not created.

Is they any add-in for freeware programs, that allows me to move emails messages & sub-folders to a archived file?

I had to learn about making multiple .pst's the hard way... my Outlook 2000 has now reached a point where no matter which Personal Folder I am using to have Mail Delivery come from and to, I cannot send mail! Messages will get stuck in the Outbox for 8 hours and then be returned to me undeliverable. During this time, I won't be able to receive email either, though I can usually make editions to any .pst.

When I finally receive the undeliverable message, Outlook Delivery will unfreeze and allow me to receive mail again, but no matter what, it freezes when I try to send.

This problem also coincided with me getting a message about how WMS Idle i still running whenever I shut down Windows (2000 Professional). FYI: The cute little application Shoot The Messenger doesn't work for this.

Any tips? I'm about to Uninstall and then Re-install Outlook. By the way, if I do that, does it delete my .pst's?

THANK YOU FOR ANY HELP YOU MIGHT PROVIDE, as I've been dealing with this for a week!

I have found that although I'm able to create other folders and 'move' my e-mail files (not copy) to the newly created PST, it doesn't appear to remove them from the old folder.

The PST, when viewed through Explorer to see the file size, exists, but the distribution doesn't seem right.

ie. Personal folder 1 = 1.6G
Personal folder 2 = 32K.

Move half the files from folder 1 to folder 2 and although in Outlook the files are in folder 2, and not in folder 1 anymore

folder 1 = 1.6G still
folder 2 = 800M !

I just lost more space on my C drive. I remember before that there was some way to update the PST so it changed size, but I don't recall.

Any help?

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Right there in the article you just commented on: compress the PST.

Leo
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I discovered this problem several years ago, and my solution was to create separate .pst files for each month's emails, using the process that Leo describes. At the beginning of each month, I create the .pst file and a "received" and "sent" sub-folder and then select and drag emails into the appropriate folder. If you label each .pst file in the format yyyy-mm then Outlook displays them in month order for you. I then compress the original mail file. As Leo suggests I keep all the .pst files in a readily accessible place - in a folder entitled Outlook in My Documents. From time to time I'll back up older monthly .pst files to CD, use Outlook's Data File Management feature to remove them from Outlook and then delete them from my hard disk - if I ever need them again, I can always restore them and use Data File Management to access them. A final tip is to use a file indexing tool (I use Copernic) to index all email content (as well as other file content) on your hard disk so that any email in Outlook, regardless of its age,can be readily found.

The best solution:
Install a moderm Linux distro with Evolution. Then use the "import function" to import your Outlook PST files. Evolution works much better than Outlook, hans not size restrictions, and you have the added advantage of getting rid of Winbug.

Still, you can continue to act like a donkey and stuck with M$ winbug since that's what most people use. It suck, it doesn't works, it's unreliable, it cost money per licence, but in the end who cares?.

My PST is just over 5GB, and it is working fine.. I am using outlook 2007. But i am getting a bit worried now though !!

Only Outlook 2002 and earlier versions have a 2GB+/- limit. Outlook 2003 and 2007 have a 20GB+/- limit.

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