fixing outlook's .pst

[Bill H.]

Having problems with outlook 2002, mainly I think, because the .pst file
grew to 2gb without warning despite Office being patched to sp2 level. (KB
says that sp1 was supposed to offer up a warning when the .pst file was
approaching the 2gb limit.)

Anyway, can I simply delete the .pst file, restart outlook, and have it
create a new, clean, empty file with the default folders, etc.? Plan would
be to copy out all the email to desktop folders, export the contact and task
list, start with a clean .pst, and reimport/copy all the stuff back in.

Thanks.

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Having problems with outlook 2002, mainly I think, because the .pst file
grew to 2gb without warning despite Office being patched to sp2 level.
(KB
says that sp1 was supposed to offer up a warning when the .pst file was
approaching the 2gb limit.)

Anyway, can I simply delete the .pst file, restart outlook, and have it
create a new, clean, empty file with the default folders, etc.? Plan
would
be to copy out all the email to desktop folders, export the contact and
task
list, start with a clean .pst, and reimport/copy all the stuff back in.

You can do that. Naturally you'll want

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Having problems with outlook 2002, mainly I think, because the .pst file
grew to 2gb without warning despite Office being patched to sp2 level.
(KB
says that sp1 was supposed to offer up a warning when the .pst file was
approaching the 2gb limit.)

Anyway, can I simply delete the .pst file, restart outlook, and have it
create a new, clean, empty file with the default folders, etc.? Plan
would
be to copy out all the email to desktop folders, export the contact and
task
list, start with a clean .pst, and reimport/copy all the stuff back in.

Thanks.

You can do that. Naturally you'll want to split it into multiple PST
files otherwise you'll just have the same problem again.

If you can upgrade to Outlook 2003 you'll get the benefit of Unicode PST
files (You'd need to create a new one in OL2003) which don't suffer the
same 2GB limit.

 

[Bill H.]

I've been suggesting an upgrade...


Can I create just a folder in outlook 2002, and have that create a separate
..pst file? Seems whenever I try to create a new file, I get all the inbox,
outbox, etc. folders as well.

Thanks.

--Bill

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

I've been suggesting an upgrade...


Can I create just a folder in outlook 2002, and have that create a
separate
.pst file? Seems whenever I try to create a new file, I get all the
inbox,
outbox, etc. folders as well.

You can do a File | Export and export to PST. I *think* that will let
you create a new one, but I'm not 100% positive since it's been a while
since I've tried it.