Compact doesn't reduce file size?

[Matthew]

Hello,

I've recently archived some emails and they've gone into a .pst of
approximately 2700MB, however outlook says that the folder size is
2535MB. I can live with this as I assume there's some extra bits that
Outlook has to deal with, however my existing inbox is rather worse.
Outlook says that I have 303MB worth, but the .pst file is 2000MB?
I've tried compacting several times (this has come down from 3400MB)
but it's not going any further. Can I do anything about this?

Thanks

 

[Peter Taylor]

Hello,

I've recently archived some emails and they've gone into a .pst of
approximately 2700MB, however outlook says that the folder size is
2535MB. I can live with this as I assume there's some extra bits that
Outlook has to deal with, however my existing inbox is rather worse.
Outlook says that I have 303MB worth, but the .pst file is 2000MB?
I've tried compacting several times (this has come down from 3400MB)
but it's not going any further. Can I do anything about this?

Thanks

The Inbox is only part of the .pst file. It includes all the folders in
Outlook.

 

[Matthew]

The Inbox is only part of the .pst file. It includes all the folders in
Outlook.

Sorry when I said inbox I included all the folders within that - the
303MB is the entire size. Interestingly I've tried running the
compression again this morning and it's knocked another 200MB off the
size.

 

[Peter Taylor]

Sorry when I said inbox I included all the folders within that - the
303MB is the entire size. Interestingly I've tried running the
compression again this morning and it's knocked another 200MB off the
size.

Try doing a defrag.

 

[Matthew]

Try doing a defrag.

A defrag didn't help, but after googling some more I found that
there's a util in the Office12 folder called SCANPST.exe that checks
the .pst file for errors. I ran and did a repair then was able to
compress it some more. Repeated the process some more (probably around
5-6) and it's now down to 400MB!

Cheers for the advice anyway