Outlook.pst
 

I recently wrote that access to my Outlook e-mails had been denied me due to an inability to open Outlook.pst files, and that my I.T man had restored my access, for a charge and without disclosing what he had done.

It happened again yesterday, the scanpst programme ( or whatever it was called)that I found claimed to have scanned all my .pst files and found no errors, but still no luck.

The net result of 1 hour on the telephone to "Microsoft Help" in the Philippines produced no help at all, other than a suggestion that I ditch my current Microsoft Office programme and sign up for an annual subscription to Office 365 for some $120 annually. Stuff that for a game of soldiers, there was nothing wrong with Outlook Express 15 years ago, so why change anything ( I know, I know )

Back to town, and this time my I.T. man fixed the problem within 15 minutes by selecting restart from the start menu, three times in quick succession without attempting to open anything between restarts. He didn't charge me.

His suggestion was to use the "restart" option at least three times, not to "shut down" and then re-boot.

Time will tell, but why is it happening at all ?

First question, how big is your .pst file? If it exceeds the 2GB or 4GB, depending which system it is on exactly, it will stop working without prior notice. This is an ancient bug never fixed. It is wise to start a new one every 1.8GB or so.

Good question, how do I find the answer, and deal with it ?

Easiest way to find it is to open a command prompt (right click, Run as admin).

Get to root of C (type cd\) , type dir /s *.pst and you will see a list of all your PSTs.

The most likely place for your current default will be in Users\yourname\Documents\Outlook files, but not necessarily - best to confirm by date.

SD

I don't think that's correct. I have a 5.39gb PST here that works fine. And there are plenty of references on the Internet to setting PSTs up to 50gb, depending on your version of Outlook.

Agreed. Mine is currently >35Gb with no issues running on various versions of Outlook.

ANSI .PST files were limited to 2GB, but unless you have very old PSTs you will be using Unicode (since Outlook 2003).

Unicode PSTs can be up to 50GB by default in Outlook 2010 and above (20GB in 2007), and this can, in theory be increased to the technical limit of 4194304GB (which is 4096TB or 4PB) via registry changes, but probably not advisable or necessary!

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/832925

To determine Unicode or ANSI:

Am I in ANSI or UNICODE format? - MSOutlook.info

Notwithstanding the ability to have humungous (technical term) .PSTs, it's probably better from a performance, resilience, backup and usability perspective to have separate PSTs for archived messages and also for sorting mails - instead of folders within default profile PST, create dedicated PSTs for the larger folders and move messages in there.


My suggestion would be to change your IT man.

SD

I understand your position, but it worked !! ( nothing else I was able to do did )