To overcome PST corruption caused due to oversizing, Microsoft increased the size limits of PST files in the latest Outlook versions, for example Outlook 2010 has 50GB PST size limit. Despite this, it is seen that PST file of Outlook 2010 starts showing erratic behavior as soon as it crosses the 10GB mark. Therefore, if you reduce the size of your PST file, you can significantly decrease the chances PST corruption and other issues related to its oversizing:
Use ‘Mailbox Cleanup’ Tool:
Mailbox Cleanup Tool is an inbuilt utility of Outlook that is used for viewing the size of your mailbox and mailbox folders. Apart from this, you can archive Outlook mailbox items with this tool and empty the ‘Deleted Items’ folder as well. Follow below steps to perform these activities with this tool:
- Go to ‘File’ tab.
- Select ‘Cleanup Tools’.
- Click ‘Mailbox Cleanup’, and then perform any of the below mentioned activities:
- Click ‘View Mailbox Size’ for viewing the total size of your mailbox and any of the individual folders.
- To search older items, select ‘Find items older than n days’, and enter a number between 1 and 9999. After that, click ‘Find’.
- To locate larger mailbox items, click ‘Find items larger than n kilobytes’, enter a number between 1 and 9999, and then hit ‘Find’.
- Click ‘AutoArchive’ to move older items of your mailbox to an archive PST file.
- To empty the ‘Deleted Items’ folder, click ‘Empty’.
Use ‘Compact Now’ Option:
If ‘Mailbox Cleanup’ utility is unable to do the needful for you, then compact your large PST file with inbuilt tool ‘Compact Now’. Follow the below mentioned steps to compact your PST file manually with this option:
- First of all, delete all the items that you do not want to keep in your PST file.
- Open ‘Folder List View’. Further, move to the bottom of the Navigation Pane and click on the ‘Folder List’ icon.
- On the ‘Navigation Pane’, select ‘Deleted Items’ folder and right-click on it. After that, click ‘Empty Folder’.
- Click the ‘File’ tab.
- Further, click ‘Account Settings’, and again click ‘Account Settings’.
- Go to the ‘Data Files’ tab and click the data file (or PST file) that you want to compact, and then click ‘Settings’.
- From there, click ‘Compact Now’.
Though the inbuilt ‘Compact Now’ feature is efficient to compact large PST files, but if your PST is containing large number of file attachments, then this tool fails. In this situation, use of a professional utility to ‘compact PST file ‘ is recommended.