OK, thanks for that, but Properties > Advanced...leads to an option to
Compress the file rather than Compact it. Yes it will make the file
smaller but my understanding is that Compacting should be removing the
large amount of empty space that should have been freed up by the
archiving, whereas Compressing just uses algorithms to better store
what's there already. Maybe they're doing the same thing, maybe
Compressing is removing new empty space (the pst is now a bit under
20MB smaller than it was), but there is a fundamental difference
between the two processes and I'm not sure if Compressing has just
squished existing data rather than removed empty data.
When you delete a stack of emails you obviously compact the folder, not
compress it to have it's new size revealed, and I'm surprised you don't
do the same with the .pst file after an archive.
Did you compact your PST file? Look in Properties > Advanced...
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
After archiving nearly 40MB of Outlook (97) data, my main .pst file
shows up as only 4MB smaller than the old size. Help says I can only
compact "offline" folders
(which I assume these aren't), so how do I reclaim the space?
