PST TOOOO BIG

[jeinnor]

I am running into a potential problem

My PST file is 1.9 gig and I am moving the files into my archive, but I need to always refer to my old mail and am scared to restore, what can I do as I know that outlook limits you from have your pst over a certain size.

Please help, this is very urgent.

THanks

[albator]

you have only to post in this forum. And you beg to urgently get help ...

[ripken204]

that is one large pst file! burn it to a dvd?

Edited July 18, 2007 by ripken204

[MHz]

Hmm, I have my email down to 30MB after a cleanup.

Since these emails seem important, then I would consider breaking up the database file first. You should be able to create some more folders within Outlook. Name them as suitable. Even something simple like Friends, Family, Business etc would be good but more descriptive, the better for searching purposes. Then create some message rules so mail from say a member of your family goes to your Family folder. I am currently using Windows Mail within Vista so I can at the moment relate to that. It is possible to execute the message rules on a chosen folder in the email program. The email will be moved as the conditions of the message rules state.

Once your email is all moved to other folders by the message rules, then the database files will be multiple database files of a smaller size, rather then your large 1.9 GB. I would consider that your amount of mail is still too large to continue adding to, so perhaps you could make some folders with similar names on your Hard Drive somewhere and then select all mail in the select email folder and drag the mail into the corresponding folder on your Hard Drive so you will end up with <subject>.eml files in the folder. Do that with all the other email folders. If your happy with the result, then you can clean out your email folders completely within your email program and start fresh again. If your folder names were informative enough then finding old emails should not be any more differcult perhaps.

[MrGuy]

Start cleaning out your folders. Search for attachments, save to disc. Start going through your sent items and delete unnecessary content. We have a couple of Outlook power users on our domain and they don't want to delete anything--everything is important, well we got a 1.9 gig pst down to 750 just by removing attachments and cleaning sent items folder.