Thinning out E-mail Archives

[Thipdar]

I'm dealing with Outlook 2003.

I would like to know how I can move all of the archived e-mails that I
received in 2007 out of the archive and onto a permanent storage media (such
as a CD-R).

I do not want to move all of my archived e-mails, just the ones from 2007.

The reason I want to do this is because the e-mail archive is now so bloated
that it takes an unacceptibly long time (in excess of five minutes) to launch
Outlook.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

it takes an unacceptibly long time (in excess of five minutes) to launch

Outlook.

What size of pst-file are we talking about here?

This amount of time is usually caused by something else other than the sheer
size of the pst-file. You must either have a slow hard disk, a lack of
system memory or a lot of addins installed as well then.

Anyway, how do you have your emails sorted now?
Do you already have an archive file?
Are these 2007 messages in your archive file or still in your main mailbox?
Are there any items older than 2007 still in your archive or in your main
mailbox?

Look at the Archive options in File-> Archive...
You can also use Search Folders to easily find all the items received in
2007.
You can of course always create a new pst-file via File-> New->Outlook Data
File... and move the 2007 items to that pst-file.

For general backup instructions to CD or DVD see;
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm

 

[Thipdar]

Hi, Roady:

archive.pst is in excess of 3Gb.
outlook.pst is 777Mb
system is a Duo Centrino, 1.8Ghz, 1Gb of Ram, WinXP

This problem has been creeping up and creeping up for many months. 2007 was
the biggest part of the problem, because I got mutiple wotk-related
spreadsheets on a daily basis.

My archived e-mails are usually sorted by Sender, not by Date.

Making a .pst file and moving (rather than copying) the unwanted e-mails to
it would certainly let me back the .pst up to a CD-R, and it should reduce
the size of the .pst.

I'll follow that approach and see if I can accomplish what I want.

Thanks.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

You're welcome!

Sounds like you are on a laptop. These usually have slower hard disk and 3GB
is indeed a size where you would start to notice some hangs although over 5
minutes is not really normal. Is there perhaps a data file check going on in
the background at that time as well?
That usually indicates that Outlook had issues shutting down.
See http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/outlookdoesntclose.htm

Aside from that, your system could benefit from more memory as well. 1GB is
quite limited when dealing with larger file sizes.