Best way to archive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe Mills
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe Mills

Hi,

I'm using Outlook 2003 and connecting to around 10 different email accounts
on my mail server using IMAP. Each accounts is over 1GB in size and I have
quite a few message rules running on Outlook to direct email to specified
folders. My problem is that Outlook is really starting to slow down now and
often hangs for a while while processing is done. I think the next stage may
be to archive come of my older my email (i'm holding around 3 years worth).
Can anyone recommend the best way of archiving the email of any other ways
to improve performance?

Thanks - joe.
 
Oliver Vukovics schreef:
Hi Joe,

here is a list of websites with further informations:
Click to expand...
All these websites offer solutions for managing the pst file.
I stopped keeping my e-mail in Outlook, it became to slow and I had a
double archive: one in Outlook and one on my file system
(d:\data\projects\..)

Now, all my e-mail is saved in folders on the file system.
On this very moment, my outlook.pst is only 25 MB!
 
Hi John,

Joe asked a question: "how to archive a PST file".

What is your question?
 
Hi John,
Joe asked a question: "how to archive a PST file".
What is your question?
Click to expand...

Joe asked the best way to archive e-mails.

You gave information with links to website about archiving a pst file.
I gave information about archiving email by saving them as msg file.

My outlook has a very good performance now: there is hardly any email
in :)
 
Joe Mills said:
I'm using Outlook 2003 and connecting to around 10 different email
accounts on my mail server using IMAP. Each accounts is over 1GB in
size and I have quite a few message rules running on Outlook to
direct email to specified folders. My problem is that Outlook is
really starting to slow down now and often hangs for a while while
processing is done. I think the next stage may be to archive come of
my older my email (i'm holding around 3 years worth). Can anyone
recommend the best way of archiving the email of any other ways to
improve performance?
Click to expand...

In addition to Oliver's sugestions, you may consider attacking this from the
server side. IMAP messages stay on the server and the contents of those
mailboxes are only reflected in the PSTs. With IMAP, the PSTs in Outlook
often don't contain a whole lot because Outlook doesn't download the
contents of folders you don't open, so if you have folders that you don't
visit, they shouldn't contain any data. So, perhaps the issue is the amount
of space on the server. If there is a way of accessing the server to
manipulate the mailbox (telnet, for example), you may be able to use server
tools to trim the data from the mailbox and keep it in another form on the
server so that it doesn't appear in the mailbox, yet remains accessible.
 
And what about compacting the pst-file? Doesn't that improve the
performance?
Maybe it's a stupid suggestion regarding he is using IMAP. (I don't
know what that is, but I sometimes compact my pst file).
 
John said:
And what about compacting the pst-file? Doesn't that improve the
performance?
Click to expand...

Actually no. It inhibits performance. When you remove a message from a
PST, the space it occupied is mared free for reuse and is not returned to
the Windows file system It remains available for Outlook to use again
without having to request additional space from the file system. Allocating
additional disk space can be an "expensive" process. By keeping the space
in the PST, Outlook does not have to wait for the file system to respond
with an additional allocation.
Maybe it's a stupid suggestion regarding he is using IMAP. (I don't
know what that is, but I sometimes compact my pst file).
Click to expand...

Since with IMAP all messages remain on the server, I don't see why archiving
is of any use unless the PST acting as the IMAP server cache is getting
close to the 2GB limit (and I wouldn't venture past 1.5GB). If the PST is
getting close to the limit, then the only thing to do is to permanently
remove messages from the server. Archiving can do that.
 
But why is his outlook slowing down after the 3 years of keeping email
in IMAP?
When it is caused by keeping all emails in that container - or a few
containers as Joe Mills wrote - what is the solution?

Joe, dïd you use the archive function of Outlook? In that case, you
will have GB's of mail in pst files. When you didn't use that archive
function, all e-mail is stored on the server (Exchange??). I thought a
mailserver like Exchange could handle many GB's of mailstorage and
doesn't have a limit of 2 GB per account.

In addition of my mentioned solution, if you want to archive by saving
the email as msg file, I can recommend MailToFile
(www.MailToFile.com/en). With MailToFile all e-mails or all old e-mails
can be stored in folders (on the filesystem) in stead of in Exchange or
pst-files. And they still are very well accessible and searchable. Even
on a read only drive (like DVD of read only network drive).

By the way, Joe are you still there?
 
John said:
But why is his outlook slowing down after the 3 years of keeping email
in IMAP?
When it is caused by keeping all emails in that container - or a few
containers as Joe Mills wrote - what is the solution?
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced that the size of the PST is the issue, but since IMAP PSTs
are ANSI format until Outlook 2007, I supposed it's possible. With IMAP and
even smaller stores, I experience performance issues. I don't think Outlook
is one of the better IMAP clients.
 
Back
Top