MS Outlook - keeping pst files under 2gb?

[hubieb]

I have ms outlook 03 on a business computer. we get a lot of automatic emails, etc etc that we NEED to be able to access and search for at all times. These can go back 5 years and there are over 10,000 of them.

This has clearly slown down our computer when outlook is running. I have archived everything over 6 months old.

What else can I do? After doing a search in this forum it seems any pst over 2gb will hurt performance. What can I do to speed up my ms outlook, and hence, my computer (since outlook is open at all times)

 

[58sniper]

Well, you don't mention if you have to search amongst ALL of them, or if you can separate them, say, by type. For example, you could store all Sales Quotes in one folder, and all Proposals in another. At that point, you could use separate .pst files for each.

Outlook has known issues when the number of items in key folders (Inbox, Sent Items, etc) exceeds about 1500.

Watch out for those .pst files. Storing them on your local machine is the only supported method, yet causes concern about retention. Also, the original style of .pst only supports ~2GB of data. After that, corruption can (and will) occur, resulting in substantial data loss.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference

 

[hubieb]

so what exactly do you suggest? separating my folders by what i need to search (and what i dont)...then what? archiving?

will importing all into separate PST folders work? can I have 10 PST folders running in outlook at once? will that speed it up?

 

[hubieb]

Bump.

Will having a 1.5 gb personal folders open along with 2 archive folders 1.5 gb each massively slow down my outlook? I've heard 2gb was the limit where things go wrong…but is that rule per pst file, allowing me to run all 3 of this with no slowdown?

 

[58sniper]

That depends on the version of .pst files. The older ANSI style max at roughly 1.92GB, at which time you can't open them, and the solution is to truncate (lose) some of the info.

The newer Unicode format allows much higher amounts of storage.

Either way, .pst files are not very stable, and aren't recommended in an Exchange environment for a myriad of reasons (available via search here). You also have to keep them on your local machine, and that's always a concern.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference

 

[hubieb]

But will separating my PST files into, say, 5 pst archived files at 1gb each, still run smoothly in my outlook (if all open at the same time).

Is it just if one file is over 2gb that we'll see a slowdown?

 

[robmazco]

For me, the bottom line is Outlook is not a storage dump, it was never designed for that. I cant understand why people use it as such. but also its unfortunate theres no other way.

But my experiences in a tech support role say its best to keep under 2 gig no matter what format of .pst they are saved or what version of Outlook. PSTs are unstable and can blow up at any time regardless of size.

If you break them up into smaller pst's though, you can then have them seperated into categories and such like a pst for each month or quarter. This makes searching them easier. Also, once a pst is open, there should be no slowdown as Outlook has cached the info and can search faster. If it does slow down even after you have opened them, then the PST's could already be corrupt or there may be some other deeper problem. But I do believe you should hav no hit to performance if they have been opened and Outlook has had a chance to cache info.

 

[PCmad]

I agree with Robmazco I was also taught some 10 years back that Outlook was not designed to be used as a filing system. What should happen is when you receive emails with attachments you save these to a central location like a network drive that is backed up. You then remove the files attached to the emails which is what takes up the size yet you still retain the original email in your mailbox.

Saving to a network drive means you can also share files and secure them allowing or not allowing others to view them. This is a lot harder to do when using Outlook as you either have to look at sharing the mailbox or, delegates.

One client machine running Outlook with 5 years worth of emails totally 10,000 items really cannot be the best way to file important documents surely ?