Too many messages in Outlook?

[simonpearce]

Hello.

I'm running Outlook 2002 on XP. I like to keep e-mails to hand for reference.

I've got about 8000 in my inbox - is this OK? At what point will there be too many? It seems to be running OK (obviously not as fast as when there was only 10 messages!).

Would be interested to hear peoples' opinions.

Simon

 

[Marcs41]

There is nothing wrong with that, except it being a mess ;-)
You are better of creating some reference subfolders for easy navigation when you look for something.
Like Clients, Vendors, Contracts, Subscribtions, Keep, Passwords, Friends, ...

Marc
[sub]If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC![/sub]

 

[IFRs]

The overal size of your Outlook.pst file is what you should look at. Keep it under 1Gig. Archive what you don't need and organize, organize, organize.

 

[simonpearce]

My inbox now has 11 000 messages - I really think I need to do something.

If I create separate folders off the inbox - will they have their own .pst file?

I could put messages from 2002 in one folder and 2003 in another, etc

Thanks for any advise

Simon

 

[Marcs41]

3000 messages moe in a few days!!?? wow! You realy need to do some mailmanagement!

If you are not on an Exchange server, and thus have a local PST file, it will remain the same PST.

You may want to clean-house a bit too.
After you do, empty the deleted items and compress your PST, it will speed up and size-down (it is like a disk-defrag).
But, if I were you, I would export the 2002 emails to another PST. That way not everything has to open every time your Oulook runs and you can even back it up on CD or so, just in case. It is easily accessed when needed with File - Open - Outlook Data File.
Same here, after you exported, compress your PST.

 

[simonpearce]

Still looking for ideas with this one folks!?

Any one know of any third party apps out there?

I really need to be able to search through ALL the mails for reference.

Simon

 

[Ainapo3]

The limit on an Outlook pst file is 2GB. After that, Outlook will not open it. On Exchange 5.5, if you are not using the Enterprise edition, there is a total limit on the entre Exchange Private Information Store database of about 16GB. I'm not sure about Exchange 2000 limitations, if there are any.

That said, I would suggest that you separate your e-mails into multiple pst files. The easiest way to do this, that I've found, is to do it by date received/sent. For example, "First Half of 2003" and "Last Half of 2003". If you get a whole lot of e-mails you wish to keep, you could do it by quarters, etc.

You could do it be category, but since e-mails tend to cross categories much of the time, I have found that by date is much easier to figure out where to look for something.

 

[simonpearce]

I think someone further up said the outlook only has one .pst file and you can't have any more - is that correct?

I don't use Exchange BTW.

Simon

 

[Marcs41]

You can split into multiple PST, like I suggested before, and as Ainapo3 says too.
Only ONE of the PST is active in receiving email or handling any filtering.

You can easily have several PST's open using File - Open - Outlook datafile, and select the one(s) you want.

They will all open every time you start Outlook, until you close them.
The advantage of what I descrived earlier is you have them always at hand when needed, and they do not have to be open all the time.