Johann said:
1) I did try File, ->Open: Same result.
2) No, I did not use (have) a copy (oops?)
3) Yes, the file is approx. 2.06 GB
4) No, I do not have a backup.
Doesn't sound like you are going to resuscitate that corrupted .pst
file. You could Google to see if there are some 3rd party tools that
profess then can raise Lazarus.
Archiving question: I archive on a monthly basis, and usually just add to
the existing archive. What would you suggest (in order to keep the archive
files below 2GB): that when one archives, to create a new archive.pst each
time? I receive approx 50-60 emails daily and discard very few of them.
PS: You may see another query from me on this list regarding the same
subject; please ignore. When I posted the first query, I got a message that
the service was unavailable and that I should try later, which I then did
without noticing that the first query did in fact register. Apologies!
I chain my archives. In the main (or delivery) message store, you set
archiving so items go into, say, an archive file named 1year.pst that
are over a year old. You don't even have to wait until items are
eligible and to eventually get moved into the 1year.pst archive file.
Just use File -> New to make a new Outlook data file. To let you use,
read, or search that archive, load it in Outlook (File -> Open).
In that 1year.pst archive, set auto-archive options to move items over 2
years old into a 2year.pst archive file. Again, you can use File -> New
to make a new .pst file before items get moved to it (so you can specify
it when selecting which file to use). Then load that 2year.pst file
using File -> Open.
You see how you repeat this process for as many years as you want. Say
you want to keep items for 5 years but only keep a year's worth of
archived items in each archive .pst file. As above you set
auto-archiving in each of the folders in the archive file to move items
that are over a year old. In the last, or 5th, archive, you set
auto-archiving to permanently delete items over 5 years old. You could
make each archive move items when they are 2 or 3 years old or whatever
snapshot interval you want for your old e-mails. Obviously the last
archive in the chain has to move the old items somewhere otherwise it
will fill up that last one in the chain over the years. It's the final
bucket so you don't want to overflow, either. Figure out how many years
you want to keep e-mails and at what intervals to store them in separate
archives in that chain of archives.
These archives MUST be loaded in Outlook. Something has to do the
actual archive function and that is Outlook, but Outlook only takes
actions on files it has open. So if, for example, you had 5 archives
chained together, you would see your mail/delivery message store and
then 5 more message stores, one for each of the 5 .pst files that were
chained together for archiving into each other. Just as archiving can
be performed on your main message store, archiving also works on every
..pst file you load in Outlook.
Otherwise, just do backups and keep them for as long as you want. You
can always restore a .pst file from your backups (to a different path
than the .pst file you are currently using) and use File -> Open in
Outlook to load it. Then you can look at the items in it to recover the
ones you want or just leave them in that archive to review them.
You could chain the archives together. Or you could do backups.