Compacting a big .pst file - which won't compact

[John Vinson]

My wife's installation of OutlookXP (on WindowsXP SP2, all Office SP's
applied) has what to me looks like a very large and unwieldy PST file:
157 MByte, with many, many subfolders. That's ok; it seems to be
working if a bit slow.

What is disconcerting is that when she deleted several hundred
messages, including a number with attachments, and used the File...
Data File Management... Settings... Compact to recover space, it
accepted the click, showed the hourglass for approximately one second,
and returned to normal operation, with no change in file size.
Clearly, it's not actually compacting anything!

Is there something else which needs to be done? I know in an Access
database for which Compact fails, I can create a new database and
import everything; is this feasible in Outlook? It seems that
OUTLOOK.PST has a special "privileged" status, and I don't want to
mess up her files (the house is MUCH more comfortable than the garden
potting shed... and if I were to delete all her email, the alternative
would probably be the compost heap!)


John W. Vinson [Access MVP, Outlook tyro]

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Did she empty the Deleted Items folder first? If not, there's probably not
enough empty space worth compacting.

For the record, 157mb is a middling sized .pst file, not a large one.

 

[Guest]

I agree with the recent post, 157M is nothing in a pst file. I work with 750M
to 2G pst files where I have to break them into smaller ones and compact. So
size shouldn't be a consideration but something I notice is users with allot
of sub-folders, and evern worse is sub-folders under sub-folders I noticed
their Outlook runs slower than a user with a large pst. Maybe this will help
you, hope so.

 

[John Vinson]

Did she empty the Deleted Items folder first? If not, there's probably not
enough empty space worth compacting.

Sorry - yes, should have mentioned that I did so. (But never overlook
the obvious solution!)

For the record, 157mb is a middling sized .pst file, not a large one.

Good to know!

John W. Vinson

 

[John Vinson]

I agree with the recent post, 157M is nothing in a pst file. I work with 750M
to 2G pst files where I have to break them into smaller ones and compact. So
size shouldn't be a consideration but something I notice is users with allot
of sub-folders, and evern worse is sub-folders under sub-folders I noticed
their Outlook runs slower than a user with a large pst. Maybe this will help
you, hope so.

She's certainly done that! four or five layers deep IIRC.

How would I go about moving the messages into a restructured .pst
file, and then making that file the default?

John W. Vinson