Outlook PST File Problem

[marcbkk]

My Outlook PST file has now grown to nearly 4GB. I have deleted tons of stuff, emptied the deleted items mailbox, and I have done a Compact Now on the PST file a few times, but the file size never gets smaller. It just keeps growing in size instead. My guess is that it shouldn't even be 1GB at this point. Is there some easy thing I can do to rebuild the file using just the emails, contacts, and folders I want to keep so that the file runs smoothly and is optimized down to its proper size? Cheers. Marc

 

[W1zzard]

what I do is have 2 PST files .. one for archiving and one for daily use. twice a year i move old stuff to the archive file. 1.84 gb outlook.pst and 11 gb archive

 

[marcbkk]

Thanks, that sounds like a good way of doing things if you have that much stuff to keep and archive. I actually don't have that much stuff though and probably don't even need to archive. Would just like to get my PST file down to its correct size. It seems it might be erroring or corrupted in some way since it doesn't reduce in size even after deleting and compacting. Is there a way I can fix this file or rebuild a new one from it? Cheers.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Scanpst.exe

 

[W1zzard]

Scanpst.exe

+1

and make a backup

 

[marcbkk]

Cheers for that. I ran Scanpst.exe and it found some errors and fixed them, but unfortunately the overly large file size stayed the same.

 

[theJesus]

Do you have a lot of attachments in your e-mails? From my understanding, that is a common cause for the PST getting larger.

 

[Mike0409]

Outlook .PST files are maxed at 2GB's anything over that and they become corrupted. You can try the scanpst.exe from above. Also this might help you.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296088

 

[marcbkk]

Thanks again everyone. I just did an export on the troubled PST file to create a new PST file from it and the file size went from 3.9GB down to 850MB. Then I installed the new PST file into Outlook that I just created and removed the old PST file from Outlook and all seems to be working fine so far. I think I am good now, but I will give it some time just to make sure there are no problems before I delete the old file. Thanks again.

 

[theJesus]

Good to hear it's OK now; I'll remember that solution for future reference.

Outlook .PST files are maxed at 2GB's anything over that and they become corrupted. You can try the scanpst.exe from above. Also this might help you.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296088

I thought that limit was raised to like 18gb in Outlook 2003 or something ridiculous like that?

edit: MS KB article discussing pst and ost size limits. According to that, 2003 and 2007 have a default limit of 20gb and 2010 is 50gb. Notice those are default, they can be changed in the registry.

 

[Mike0409]

Good to hear it's OK now; I'll remember that solution for future reference.

I thought that limit was raised to like 18gb in Outlook 2003 or something ridiculous like that?

yeah it was changed to unicode 20gb limit in 2003/2007 office. ANSI is limited to 2gb.

I didn't see any version of office so assumed he hit a limit somewhere.

 

[newtekie1]

Thanks again everyone. I just did an export on the troubled PST file to create a new PST file from it and the file size went from 3.9GB down to 850MB. Then I installed the new PST file into Outlook that I just created and removed the old PST file from Outlook and all seems to be working fine so far. I think I am good now, but I will give it some time just to make sure there are no problems before I delete the old file. Thanks again.

That is exactly what I was going to suggest. Export everything to another PST file, delete the old(or rather move it out of the default folder) and replace it with the new PST file that you exported.

 

[marcbkk]

Yes, thanks, it seems to be working well now. Also, I did a compact on the new PST file I created and it dropped it down another 50MB or so in file size. Nice to see some things can be so simple