IMAP profile pst file too large

[Sakshale eQuorian]

I have a user whose IMAP profile .pst file has hit 2Gig.... and
nothing works.
Is there a safe procedure to deal with this problem?
What the heck does Outlook need 2Gig of local pst storage for
anyway?

I know he has a lot of mail on the IMAP server, but that is where it
belongs,
not in some pst file on his laptop.

He's running Outlook 2003 SP3 under Win2K.

Sakshale

 

[Bob]

FYI

I used c:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\SCANPST.EXE
to verify the file's health.

1 - I couldn't simply open it as the USERNAME\Local Settings folder is
hidden.
I simply copied it to c:\temp and tested it there.

2 - For the record, the IMAP pst file is located at:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data
\Microsoft\Outlook

It did not help. I also tried:
Tools -> Options -> Mail Setup -> Data Files
(select IMAP server) -> Settings -> Compact Now

None of the above helped.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Outlook syncs all subscribed folders. To help reduce file size, reduce the
number of folders synced and only do headers.

since its only a local copy, I would unsubscribe a folder and compress the
pst. if that fails, you'll need to delete the pst and let outlook recreate
it.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]





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[Peter Durkee]

Your best bet is to move the bad pst file to a different location and then
start Outlook, allowing it to create a new one. Then you can open the bad
file from within Outlook and copy some of the messages to the current
mailbox. Then again, if you upgrade to Outlook 2003 or 2007 you could copy
all the messages to the new PST, assuming the damaged old PST allows that.

-Peter

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I have a user whose IMAP profile .pst file has hit 2Gig.... and
nothing works.
Is there a safe procedure to deal with this problem?
What the heck does Outlook need 2Gig of local pst storage for
anyway?

The local PST is a local cache of the contents of the IMAP server. Without
it, performance would suffer.

I know he has a lot of mail on the IMAP server, but that is where it
belongs,
not in some pst file on his laptop.

That's how Outlook handles IMAP - it places copies of subscribed folders's
contents on the local machine.