Large PSTs

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave
  • Start date Start date
D

Dave

Hello I have been running into pst files that are at or over 1GB in size
lately. I have explained to the end user that this size pst will cause slow
downs in Outlook's performance. They all say the same thing "I've cleaned
it out and it is still this large." The problems I have been running into
are Outlook taking a long time to open and Outlook not responding every so
often. What can I do fix these problems. What solutions can I offer them
as far as keeping their data and limiting the size of the pst file?
 
Your users can have more than one PST file. I would
suggest creating one for each year or a logical system
that will work for your users.
 
They would still have the same amount of data just across multiple files
then. Should I have them make yearly psts and not open the older ones
unless needed?
 
Dave said:
Hello I have been running into pst files that are at or over 1GB in
size lately. I have explained to the end user that this size pst
will cause slow downs in Outlook's performance. They all say the
same thing "I've cleaned it out and it is still this large." The
problems I have been running into are Outlook taking a long time to
open and Outlook not responding every so often. What can I do fix
these problems. What solutions can I offer them as far as keeping
their data and limiting the size of the pst file?
Click to expand...

Have them compact the PST file. Explain to them that if they don't start
breaking up their PST, they risk losing ALL their mail, Contacts, Tasks,
everything.
 
How do you compact in Outlook 2000?
Brian Tillman said:
Have them compact the PST file. Explain to them that if they don't start
breaking up their PST, they risk losing ALL their mail, Contacts, Tasks,
everything.
Click to expand...
 
Dave said:
How do you compact in Outlook 2000?
Click to expand...

Right-click on the root of the folder file (usually "Personal Folders" or
"Outlook Today") and choose "Properties", then "Advanced". Click "Compact
now".
 
"Dave" said in news:[email protected]:
Hello I have been running into pst files that are at or over 1GB in
size lately. I have explained to the end user that this size pst
will cause slow downs in Outlook's performance. They all say the
same thing "I've cleaned it out and it is still this large." The
problems I have been running into are Outlook taking a long time to
open and Outlook not responding every so often. What can I do fix
these problems. What solutions can I offer them as far as keeping
their data and limiting the size of the pst file?
Click to expand...

The .pst file for Outlook (and .dbx files for Outlook Express) are database files. When you delete an item in a database, that only changes its status to "Deleted". The item does not get physically removed from the database until you do a purge. In Outlook, purging is compacting. That will physically remove the delete-marked items from the file.

Tell your users to enable AutoArchive. This is a 2-step process. They need to enable AutoArchive in the options. Then right-click on each folder in the Folder List pane, Properties, and enable auto-archive on that folder. Make sure the global AutoArchive period is equal to or shorter than the shortest time you configure for the auto-archive period on a folder. For example, if you have the Sent Items folder configured to auto-archive items older than 12 months but you configure auto-archive on the Deleted Items folder for 2 weeks, configure the global AutoArchive period for 2 weeks, or shorter. Otherwise, if, say, you configure the global AutoArchive for 3 months then you will end up with 3 months of items in the Deleted Items folder that are long over the 1 month expiration configured specifically for the Deleted Items folder. The global AutoArchive interval should be the minimum of all the folder-specific auto-archive intervals.

At the end of the fiscal year, have the users rename their archive.pst file to yyyy-archive.pst (although I usually include the username in the filename). When Outlook does its next archive, it recreates the missing archive.pst file.

This way, users have their current items in their current information store (.pst file). They can have their archive.pst open in Outlook, too, to see their prior year's worth of items. They can even have their 2002-archive.pst, 2001-archive.pst, and other yearly archive folders open in Outlook. The 1.87 GB limit is just a limit within a particular ..pst file, not across all concurrently opened .pst files.


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