Outlook 2003 locked up

[Harold]

Using Outlook to access a hugh email base on a remote server. Tried to sort
the emails by size and the program locked up in that mode. Turned it off and
rebooted and when it comes on it's in the same mode - still locked up. None
of the functions will work.

 

[VanguardLH]

Using Outlook to access a hugh email base on a remote server.

You'll have to explain what is a "hugh email base". Does that mean the
..pst file is large? If so, how large? Is it an ANSI or Unicode format
..pst file?

Why does it matter that you are accessing a "remote server"? Since
rare few users run the mail server on the same host as where they run
their e-mail client (Outlook), the mail server will always be a remote
host. The e-mail client is local to you. The mail host is remote
(because it isn't on your local host).

Tried to sort the emails by size and the program locked up in that
mode. Turned it off and rebooted and when it comes on it's in the
same mode - still locked up. None of the functions will work.

Yet tried starting Outlook in its safe mode ("outlook.exe /safe") which
does not load any enabled add-ons and COM plug-ins that were installed
for Outlook? If it works then, you have a problem with an add-on or
COM plug-in. If you get in using safe mode, disable all add-ons, exit
Outlook, and load Outlook in normal mode. Did the problem reappear?
If so, and because all add-ons are disabled, then the problem is with a
COM plug-in (not all are listed in Outlook's config screens). You'll
have to visit Add/Remove Programs and see what got installed that you
couldn't disable inside of Outlook and uninstall those "helper"
programs.

If the problem remained gone after loading Outlook normally after
disabling all add-ons and COM plug-ins that were listed then one of
those is probably at fault. Now you get to enable them one at a time,
exit and reload Outlook, and test if the problem reappeared. When it
reappears, you know it's the just prior enabled add-on that causes the
hangup. You'll then have to find out if there is a later version of
that add-on that will work with your version of Outlook and Windows or
you'll have to uninstall and get rid of it.

 

[Harold]

VanguardLH,

Appreciate your response. The computer is my daughters and she accesses her
Corporate email server with outlook. Has about 50,000 emails and was trying
to delete some of them. Hit the sort by size option to get to the largest
ones first for deletion. That's when Outlook froze. I did open Outlook in
the safe mode and it did not help. Wondered if the only recourse was to
remove the program and reload it? Only wanted to do that as a last resort
because we had some problems sinking her Outlook to the Corporate network.
Would certainly appreciate any further advice.

 

[VanguardLH]

VanguardLH,

Appreciate your response. The computer is my daughters and she accesses her
Corporate email server with outlook. Has about 50,000 emails and was trying
to delete some of them. Hit the sort by size option to get to the largest
ones first for deletion. That's when Outlook froze. I did open Outlook in
the safe mode and it did not help. Wondered if the only recourse was to
remove the program and reload it? Only wanted to do that as a last resort
because we had some problems sinking her Outlook to the Corporate network.
Would certainly appreciate any further advice.

How long did she wait before deciding Outlook was permanently frozen?
Did she start it before going to bed and check when she woke up?

She has 50,000 e-mail items in the SAME folder? Is she nuts!? There
shouldn't be more than around 5000 items within a folder.

Have her create 2 temporary working folders. Have her move (not copy
but move) a couple thousand e-mails from this ridiculously abused source
folder in the 1st working folder. Do a size sort in that to delete
whatever e-mails she wants (she'll have to know what threshold she want
above which she doesn't keep that e-mail). Move that bunch out to the
2nd working folder. Move another couple thousand from the abused source
folder into the 1st working folder and repeat the sort, delete, and move
remaining into the 2nd working folder. Repeat until she has processed
all 50,000 e-mails which will leave the source folder empty. If the
objective is to make the .pst file smaller, it won't get smaller when
you delete items. First, the deleted items go into the Deleted Items
folder (so they really haven't been deleted). She'll have to delete all
items in the Deleted Items folder to permanently delete them or use
Shift+Del to permanently delete the selected items (that were over her
size threshold). Those delete-marked items are still in the database,
so now she'll have to compact it. If the .pst file is still not as
small as she wants, she'll have to repeat the above process: move a
couple thousand items from the 2nd working folder into the 1st working
folder, sort, [permanently] delete, move remaining in 1st working folder
back into the source folder, and repeat until exhausted all e-mail items
in the 2nd working folder, followed by [deleting the items from the
Deleted Items folder and] compacting the message store. She can keep
doing this indefinitely to keep reducing the size threshold until she
gets the message store to whatever size for which she is targeting.

I'm not sure why she is deleting e-mails with attachments first versus
deleting really old e-mails first. Hard to tell what is her real goal
since it wasn't mentioned. She could even use auto-archive on ancient
e-mails to move them into an archive .pst file, trash that archive .pst
file if she really doesn't want to keep them, and then compact the
current message store (since "move" to archive is actually a copy and
delete so you need to compact to purge the delete-marked items in the
current message store).

It might be that all she needs to do is detach all the attachments to
her e-mails. Maybe she has lots of e-mails with huge attachments.

http://www.sperrysoftware.com/Outlook/Attachment-Save.asp
Isn't free. Never used it myself.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/OutlookAttachView.shtml
I've use Nirsoft utilities before and have several installed but never
used this one. Make a copy of the .pst file before using this.

http://www.google.com/search?q=+outlook++attachment++save finds a
bunch of others (add "+free" to the search criteria if only interested
in free solutions) but I've only heard of the one from Sperry.

 

[Harold]

Good point about waiting for it to finish. She has only let it run a few
hours, so will let it run over night to see if it finishes the sort operation.

She is not very computer literate. Knows email and word processing and
that's about it. Get a hundred or more emails a day, some with large video
files attached. Just let them build up until there were to many to deal
with. And yes probably a little 'nuts'.

I understand your comments about deleting emails in the two working folders
and reducing the size of the pst. However since none of the functions in
Outlook are available now, how can I access the folders to do the deletion?

The final goal is to get rid of most of the emails and get Outlook up and
running again.

Thanks
--
Harold

VanguardLH,

Appreciate your response. The computer is my daughters and she accesses her
Corporate email server with outlook. Has about 50,000 emails and was trying
to delete some of them. Hit the sort by size option to get to the largest
ones first for deletion. That's when Outlook froze. I did open Outlook in
the safe mode and it did not help. Wondered if the only recourse was to
remove the program and reload it? Only wanted to do that as a last resort
because we had some problems sinking her Outlook to the Corporate network.
Would certainly appreciate any further advice.

How long did she wait before deciding Outlook was permanently frozen?
Did she start it before going to bed and check when she woke up?

She has 50,000 e-mail items in the SAME folder? Is she nuts!? There
shouldn't be more than around 5000 items within a folder.

Have her create 2 temporary working folders. Have her move (not copy
but move) a couple thousand e-mails from this ridiculously abused source
folder in the 1st working folder. Do a size sort in that to delete
whatever e-mails she wants (she'll have to know what threshold she want
above which she doesn't keep that e-mail). Move that bunch out to the
2nd working folder. Move another couple thousand from the abused source
folder into the 1st working folder and repeat the sort, delete, and move
remaining into the 2nd working folder. Repeat until she has processed
all 50,000 e-mails which will leave the source folder empty. If the
objective is to make the .pst file smaller, it won't get smaller when
you delete items. First, the deleted items go into the Deleted Items
folder (so they really haven't been deleted). She'll have to delete all
items in the Deleted Items folder to permanently delete them or use
Shift+Del to permanently delete the selected items (that were over her
size threshold). Those delete-marked items are still in the database,
so now she'll have to compact it. If the .pst file is still not as
small as she wants, she'll have to repeat the above process: move a
couple thousand items from the 2nd working folder into the 1st working
folder, sort, [permanently] delete, move remaining in 1st working folder
back into the source folder, and repeat until exhausted all e-mail items
in the 2nd working folder, followed by [deleting the items from the
Deleted Items folder and] compacting the message store. She can keep
doing this indefinitely to keep reducing the size threshold until she
gets the message store to whatever size for which she is targeting.

I'm not sure why she is deleting e-mails with attachments first versus
deleting really old e-mails first. Hard to tell what is her real goal
since it wasn't mentioned. She could even use auto-archive on ancient
e-mails to move them into an archive .pst file, trash that archive .pst
file if she really doesn't want to keep them, and then compact the
current message store (since "move" to archive is actually a copy and
delete so you need to compact to purge the delete-marked items in the
current message store).

It might be that all she needs to do is detach all the attachments to
her e-mails. Maybe she has lots of e-mails with huge attachments.

http://www.sperrysoftware.com/Outlook/Attachment-Save.asp
Isn't free. Never used it myself.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/OutlookAttachView.shtml
I've use Nirsoft utilities before and have several installed but never
used this one. Make a copy of the .pst file before using this.

http://www.google.com/search?q=+outlook++attachment++save finds a
bunch of others (add "+free" to the search criteria if only interested
in free solutions) but I've only heard of the one from Sperry.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Good point about waiting for it to finish. She has only let it run a few
hours, so will let it run over night to see if it finishes the sort
operation.

It shouldn't take that long. You didn't answer Vanguard's question about the
size of the PST. Also, you should find out if it's in the ANSI (Outlook 2002
and earlier) format or in Unicode format. Right-click the root of the folder
list (the "Outlook Today" location, usually labeled "Personal Folders") and
choose Properties. Click Advanced and examine the "Format" field. If it
contains the string "97-2002", then it's a old format PST which has a size
limit of 2GB.

 

[Harold]

I am not at her computer today, but I will try to check the version tomorrow.
However I am pretty sure it is a 2003 version. It was bought less than a
year ago. And I'm not sure I can get to the Outlook today location since
every time you open Outlook it immediately goes into the mode of trying to
sort the email inbox by size.