Outlook 2007 opens All PSTs in profile - change from 2003

[Dave]

I've been forced to upgrade to Outlook 2007. Now every time I start up
Outlook it updates the MODIFIED date on EVERY pst configured for that
profile. Previously in 2003, only those PST files that were accessed were
modified.

This makes it very difficult to watch for inactive PST files.

I am currently running XP, with SP2. and was forced to install windows
search. I have subsequently turned indexing off since I don't need the "fast
Indexing".

 

[Roady [MVP]]

How were you forced to install it? The prompt was a suggestion to install it
when you want index your e-mails. You could have simply dismissed it if you
don't want it.

There are more reasons why a modified date on a pst-file could change
without it being active. Add-ins for instance could access the pst-file and
updates could require an update to the internal index tables of pst-files to
be made. So looking at the modified date of a pst-file to determine whether
or not it is active is not a guaranteed method anyway.

 

[Dave]

How were you forced to install it? The prompt was a suggestion to install it

when you want index your e-mails. You could have simply dismissed it if you
don't want it.

It would have been nice to be Given an option. The prompts in no way implied
that I could cancel it without problems. The KB articles I read indicated
that the new windows search was "required" when I went up to Outlook 2007. I
have since turned it off, but that did not solve the original problem.

There are more reasons why a modified date on a pst-file could change
without it being active. Add-ins for instance could access the pst-file and
updates could require an update to the internal index tables of pst-files to
be made. So looking at the modified date of a pst-file to determine whether
or not it is active is not a guaranteed method anyway.

I am aware that there are many reasons for a modified date to be changed.
However, simply starting up Outlook 2003 did not cause every PST file in a
profile to have its date modified. Nor did Outlook 2003 attempt to open
every PST file (it did verify that the PST file was actually where it was
supposed to be, but it did not open it.)

Since installing Outlook 2007, every PST in the profile is OPENED by OUTLOOK
and remains open until OUTLOOK closes. This uses up massive amounts of
memory, especially on one profile.

My Archive profile had 149 PST files defined for it. (Yes, I have e-mails
going back to 1982 which have been imported from various e-mail programs and
previous versions of Outlook.) It worked fine in Outlook 2003. Some of those
PST files hadn't been opened in over two years.
Ok, the indexing thing opened and reset the file dates which caused a
headache with my backup which was not expecting these files to all be
modified at once. But NOW, every PST file in the profile is opened every time
I start Outlook, this does not seem right, and seems to be a big waste of
resources.

Surely there must be a killbit somewhere to tell Outlook to only open (and
check) PSTs when they are actually opened by me, rather than every time
Outlook starts up.

Dave