Very large OST file in Outlook

[Mark Gould]

Outlook 2003, Exchange 2003. All full service packs etc.

I have many users with VERY large OST files, but is this case, the mailbox
is nearly 10gb in an OST which is well over Microsoft's recommendation of 2Gb.

The inbox and sent items are well in excess of the 5000 recommended items.

On the machine in question (A Dell Precision with a quad core processor,
Windows 32bit XP, 4Gb Memory, Office 2003 and Copernic enterprise search -
This could be an issue but is on the latest build).

It has been suggested to me that moving to Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007
would solve the issue. Not withstanding the significant cost, this is not
something that I wish to do.

Does any one have any ideas how to speed up the user experience as currently
now when changing between messages there can be a noticeable lag.

I can’t impose mailbox limit and I can stop the MD keeping everything he
received.

With thanks


Mark

 

[dlw]

archive or move things to .pst files, the MD will still have everything, and
if you organize it by date or subject it will be better than what he has now.

ps- going to outlook 2007 will generate more issues than it will solve

 

[Mark Gould]

Sorry should have said he runs two desktops and a laptop.

I could I imagine move e-mails to PST and copy the PSt's onto each machine
as they are going to be static

He needs them online to Copernic can index them.

Many thanks so far


Mark

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)]

Outlook 2003, Exchange 2003. All full service packs etc.

I have many users with VERY large OST files, but is this case, the mailbox
is nearly 10gb in an OST which is well over Microsoft's recommendation of 2Gb.

The 2GB recommendation, and it was really more than a recommendation it
was a limit, applied to earlier versions of Outlook.

The inbox and sent items are well in excess of the 5000 recommended items.

On the machine in question (A Dell Precision with a quad core processor,
Windows 32bit XP, 4Gb Memory, Office 2003 and Copernic enterprise search -
This could be an issue but is on the latest build).

It has been suggested to me that moving to Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2007
would solve the issue. Not withstanding the significant cost, this is not
something that I wish to do.

Does any one have any ideas how to speed up the user experience as currently
now when changing between messages there can be a noticeable lag.

I can't impose mailbox limit and I can stop the MD keeping everything he
received.

With thanks

If he won't limit his stuff then all you can do is performance test his
machine. Have you checked to see what his CPU usage, memory usage, disk
system numbers look like? My guess is, based upon your description that
maybe you could upgrade his disks to a faster system.

What antivirus are you using? Have you tried using a different desktop
search (Windows or Google perhaps?). I like Copernic but maybe that's
an issue. Probably need to dig into PerfMon to really sort it out at
this point.


-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)]

archive or move things to .pst files, the MD will still have everything, and
if you organize it by date or subject it will be better than what he has now.

ps- going to outlook 2007 will generate more issues than it will solve

Such as?



--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q

 

[Mark Gould]

Noted about the disks, he is running RAID1 SAS drives on a dedicated hardware
raid card.

We are running AVG corporate edition with the location of the OST and
copernic files excluded.

As Copernic is a corporate item which we have paid for and centrally rolled
out, I don't really want to make his machine an exemption.

Perfmon could be the way forward but as the slowness comes and goes
depending on his usage I will have to set the update interval to be
infrequent which will average the peaks out etc.

Suggestions are mote than welcome!

Mark

 

[Mike Shen]

Hi Parkis,

Thank you for posting.

From your post, I understand you would like to speed up the user experience
who has large OST file. If I'm off base, please feel free to let me know.

Regarding the issue, I suggest you have a look regarding the following
article:

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/12/17/447750.aspx

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Mike Shen
Microsoft Online Community Support
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[Mark Gould]

Yes you are bang on the nail, my issue is my MD is not keen to have anything
NOT offline on his laptop otherwsie the ideas in the article are very valid.

I think mnay of my issues are caused by the users aren;t they all!)

Many thanks

 

[Mike Shen]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your response.

From your description, I understand that you would like to have all the
messages synced to the Offline File. Therefore, the option 3 (Limit the
amount of email synced to my OST) in the article is not available. If I'm
off base, please feel free to let me know.

Based the current situation, for the OST file large issue, I suggest you
archive the old message to PST files and copy them to the three computers.
You can use Windows Desktop Search to index the PST files.

For inbox and sent item number issue, you can refer to following article to
improve performance.

If there are more than 3500 to 5000 items in any of the folders,
performance issues are expected. Outlook users experience poor performance
when they work with a folder that contains many items on a server that is
running Exchange Server
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905803/en-us

Mike