Advice on utilities for housekeeping and syncing

[Chigongman]

I've got a 2GB .pst file on my admin machine. Small bus, growing fast. I've
been the only user til now. Machine handles the size no problem. However,
I've not got a laptop to also deal with, and soon will have an admin
assistant and other users.

I've got to radically reduce the size of the .pst file so I can readily sync
it to the notebook (uh, with a powerful notebook and a good sync utility,
gee, maybe I can just do the sync part for now starting with a full copy and
reduce the size later on... I wonder). In reducing the size of the .pst, the
obvious first thought is to archive all but the recent stuff. In doing that,
I'm not sure if a utility is best. A lot of the size of the .pst is
attachments. I sometimes use the Advanced Find feature in Outlook, though,
and would hate to lose the ability to quickly find older emails when needed.
Again, I don't know if a utility can solve that or if restoring archives is
necessary. (Or maybe I should keep a separate copy of the current .pst on
hand to search when needed to look for old emails?)

I've seen the suggested utilities for "housekeeping" and "syncing" on
slipstick:

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/sync.htm
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/housekeeping.htm

Those are a LOT of utility programs, with very different feature sets. It
would take me forever to explore and experiment and I still wouldn't have a
read on reliability.

So, I'm hoping I can please get some advice here.

I'm sure it will be useful to me as move forward to keep attachments from
growing the size of the .pst too fast. I don't know if an attachments
solution is all I need even for the few years of past stuff, or what. For
now, I'm mainly after an elegant way to sync with the notebook. Reducing .pst
file size for any other purpose is a goal for "soon" but not necessary right
now.

Thanks!

Jay

 

[Chigongman]

To clarify my opening post...

I only use Outlook for contacts and email.

The size of my .pst file is 1.33 GB.

As to the Sync utilities suggested on the slipstick site:

EZ2Sync looks like it "might" be stable and reliable, but how could I know
that? (If their counterpart for syncing all "files" is reliable, that could
be interesting too.)

Same with EZOutlookSync.

Tiny companies without much to make judgments on.

OsaSync does look quite interesting (except one testimonial says it's best
to have only a month's worth of emails -- I sure hope that's not really the
case or I'm out of luck -- and a Windows IT Pro review says it runs "almost"
error free).

OutlookSync doesn't sync email.

QSynchronization for Outlook is not a very professionally done web site, and
gives me an error when I click to download the "test" version (very Euro
language there).

SynchPST seems perhaps okay -- except the criteria for deciding that contact
or email data is identical isn't all that thorough (contacts only go by
first/last name, or company, and email go by date/time and Subject only), and
testimonials on the OsaSync site say it’s got lot of issues including being
very slow.

Not much else looks viable.

Not yet sure if a reduced .pst file and just copying that back and forth is
viable

Also, not sure if starting out I should just copy the .pst file from the
desktop to the notebook or if I should “import†the .pst file from the
desktop into the notebook’s Outlook (but I’m sure I can get that info from
whoever makes the utility I choose).

Sorry this is so lengthy but I have a lot riding on it, and I really
appreciate the help.

Thanks!

Jay

 

[Chigongman]

Not that I've gotten any replies yet... but... (I realize it's been lengthy
and convoluted... a bit of "thinking out loud")...

I've figured out that if I just Archive using Outlook's normal feature I can
drastically reduce the size of the outlook.pst file, which I can copy back
and forth between machines as readily as running a sync utilitiy (already
mapped network drives to go right to the folders, and figured out how to
change the location of the .pst if I want to group the file with others in a
common folder to copy back and forth). And I can run Advanced Find on the
Archive folder just as readily as I do on the Personal Folders folder.

(Heck, if I want to get realy creative, I can probably create separate
Archives files/folders for each year of history, too... then only open what I
want to search in.)

So, I think that's about it.

Am I missing anything?

Is there still any point at all in going to the housekeeping or syncing
utilities?

THANKS!

 

[wetzel]

Dear Chigongman,

SynchPst had performance problems in the past sometimes.

With the new version 2 performance is not the problem any longer. It is
up to three times faster now.

You can download the test version from www.synchpst.com.

Thomas Wetzel
www.synchpst.com