Outlook PST files
Good day experts,
My primary e-mail account is a POP3 mail account (we don't have exchange) that downloads into a local PST file on my laptop.
I receive and send a lot of mail daily and as a result my PST file grows a lot. I can't really delete any messages as I need to keep them as evidence and I do refer back to older messages and conversations daily.
Every day, after work, I come home and run a backup from my laptop to my desktop computer that I use as a backup machine. I do the backup by running a folder sync between laptop and desktop over my wireless network. My PST file is part of this daily backup.
Over time, my PST file grows so large that the backup takes ages. I want to know: is there a way to configure outlook to split the PST file into separate smaller files. This will allow my sync application to only copy files that were modified or newly created.
Let me know
Thanks
My primary e-mail account is a POP3 mail account (we don't have exchange) that downloads into a local PST file on my laptop.
I receive and send a lot of mail daily and as a result my PST file grows a lot. I can't really delete any messages as I need to keep them as evidence and I do refer back to older messages and conversations daily.
Every day, after work, I come home and run a backup from my laptop to my desktop computer that I use as a backup machine. I do the backup by running a folder sync between laptop and desktop over my wireless network. My PST file is part of this daily backup.
Over time, my PST file grows so large that the backup takes ages. I want to know: is there a way to configure outlook to split the PST file into separate smaller files. This will allow my sync application to only copy files that were modified or newly created.
Let me know
Thanks
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SOLUTION
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You can have dozens of archives. Maybe one per year perhaps.
An Archive shouldn't grow unless you keep adding to it. If you archive by year, then your archives should only grow to the amount of mail you got for that year and no more.
You can open multiple archives at any one time and copy them to you other computer and if you only copy files that have been changed, then copy process should be quicker too.
What version of Outlook do you have?
An Archive shouldn't grow unless you keep adding to it. If you archive by year, then your archives should only grow to the amount of mail you got for that year and no more.
You can open multiple archives at any one time and copy them to you other computer and if you only copy files that have been changed, then copy process should be quicker too.
What version of Outlook do you have?
ASKER
I have Outlook 2010.
I will need to archive a lot more than that. I started a new PST file on 1 Jan 2011 and during the one year it grew to over 8GB.
I would probably archive monthly or weekly.
Are there options available for Outlook to create a new archive file automatically every 500MB or so?
Thanks
I will need to archive a lot more than that. I started a new PST file on 1 Jan 2011 and during the one year it grew to over 8GB.
I would probably archive monthly or weekly.
Are there options available for Outlook to create a new archive file automatically every 500MB or so?
Thanks
I don't think you can limit the size, but once you have made an archive you only have to copy it once to your PC for backing up, as it won't change after that anymore, except maybe the last one.
I forgot something, depending on your email provider and whether you have mailbox size limits there, it might be worthwhile to use imap for your connection rather than pop. With imap the mails would stay on the server, and the provider would be responsible for backups etc. But of course this would depend on the space you have available there. You would then not have to keep local copies of your mail, and you can connect with any PC or device using imap and get direct access to your mails, whether you have already seen that mail on your PC or not. If you use google mail as provider for example, you have plenty of space available (I don't know if there is a limit that google sets), and it automatically supports imap.
There are no options to set an archive to a specific size and then create a new one - you would have to monitor it manually.
What the heck are you sending / receiving?
Have you considered Google Apps - they give you 25gb and then you don't have to worry about archiving.
What the heck are you sending / receiving?
Have you considered Google Apps - they give you 25gb and then you don't have to worry about archiving.
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ASKER
Thank you experts,
It seems managing archive files is perhaps the best option avaialble to me.
It would have been great if Outlook could store its mails in seperate files like Windows Mail.
So, I didn't really get the answer I was looking for but perhaps I got the best answer possible.
Thanks
It seems managing archive files is perhaps the best option avaialble to me.
It would have been great if Outlook could store its mails in seperate files like Windows Mail.
So, I didn't really get the answer I was looking for but perhaps I got the best answer possible.
Thanks
ASKER
Let's explore the archive option:
Is it possible, to have multiple archive files with a set size limit?
If not, the archive file is going to grow just as big as my current live PST file and every time I archive something, it will have to be backed up anyway so I would have the same problem.
Let me know
Thanks