Outlook autoarchive question

Rothgarr

I noticed my "Outlook.pst" file was 1.8 gigabytes in size. I never had used the Autoarchive feature so I told it to archive anything older that 2 years in an attempt to decrease the size of the Outlook.pst file.

It did its thing for, like, 20 minutes and I had a new "archive.pst" file that was now 1.2 gigabytes. But my original Outlook file is still 1.8 gigs...

Shouldn't my Outlook.pst file now be 1.2 gigabytes leaner?

redimpulse

Nope. Outlook.pst is your original archive folder. Only way to lean it up is to delete things out of that archive.

All the autoarchive did was create the archive.pst and archive anything that was old and not already archived in Outlook.pst.

Orogogus

Try compressing the first folder. From the Outlook help file:

A data file is a Personal Folders file (.pst). If you delete items from a data file, the size of the file will not change unless you compact the file. Compacting the file might take several minutes.

On the File menu, click Data File Management.
Click the data file that you want to compact, and then click Settings.
Click Compact Now.

redimpulse

I wouldn't recommend that.

God I can't count how many people at work have corrupted their archives beyond repair by compacting it. Then they get all pissy at me because they broke it and I'm not going to do anything to fix it.

Don't compress your archive unless you really don't care about those emails.

Orogogus

Well, I'm just saying, the size of the PST file isn't going to change even if you empty your Deleted Items folder until you compact it; that's why the OP didn't see any change after he moved his messages into archive.pst. Yeah, it's easy to think the process isn't working and bork your emails if you shut it down, but I'm pretty sure it's the answer to the OP's question.

Rothgarr

Since my .pst files get backed up every night I figured "What the hell" and compressed the file as mentioned above. It took almost 30 minutes and I made sure not to interrupt it. But it totally worked. The two smaller files now add up correctly to the size of the original larger file.

I'm glad that worked because I didn't want to contribute to ours backups filling up so quickly.

Another reason why I wanted to get the file size down was because I heard that Outlook pukes when the .pst file hits two gigs.

Thanks!