Does Outlook 2003 allow .pst files to be larger than 2 GB?

[Brian]

Outlook 2000 allowed my archive file to grow larger than 2 GB, then refused
access to the file. No warning at all! Can more recent versions of Outlook
access these larger files? OR, is that an add-on that will increase or
remove this size limit? I know I can 'Truncate' the file, but this is not
very satisfactory.

Brian

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

Outlook 2000 allowed my archive file to grow larger than 2 GB, then
refused access to the file. No warning at all! Can more recent
versions of Outlook access these larger files? OR, is that an add-on
that will increase or remove this size limit? I know I can
'Truncate' the file, but this is not very satisfactory.

Brian

Yes, a unicode-format PST file created in Outlook 2003 can grow much much
much larger. OL2003 won't convert an older (ANSI) format file, though, so
you'd need to copy stuff in from your old one.

 

[TheLaw]

Brian,

Outlook 2003 uses unicode with it's .pst file and will allow a file to
grow to 20 GB.

 

[Brian]

Thank you. So, are you saying that if I upgrade to Outlook 2003, I will be
able to open and add to the archive file to which 2000 is refusing access?
Then all my problems are fixed and I can go on as if nothing happened?

Brian

 

[Brian]

Thanks Lawrence. So are you saying that if I upgraded to 2003, I still could
not access this one big file with 3 years worth of great stuff? I can't copy
from it because I can't open it right now?

Always a catch, eh?

Brian

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

In

Thanks Lawrence. So are you saying that if I upgraded to 2003, I
still could not access this one big file with 3 years worth of great
stuff? I can't copy from it because I can't open it right now?

Yep. You're out of luck unless you can run the PST crop utility against a
copy of the file, and truncate the file to get *some* if not all of it - I'm
presuming you don't have a good backup of the file before it hit the 2GB
limit.

You'd have to create a new PST file in OL2003 / unicode format, and then be
able to open the old PST in order to copy the data in.

Always a catch, eh?

Yep - sorry, but regular backups are a good thing to start doing, in any
case.

 

[Brian]

Pretty clunky, eh? You'd think 'they'd' do a bit smoother a job for us when
they change formats. Right, no back-ups, but I still would have lost the
most recent stuff. Truncate just cut off 25 MB (which ones) so I am losing
a bit over 1%. Recovering 98.?% beats the hell out of losing 100%. Amazing
how they would design Auto-Archive to take you past the limit without any
warning, though.

Thanks for the help

Brian

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thank you. So, are you saying that if I upgrade to Outlook 2003, I
will be able to open and add to the archive file to which 2000 is
refusing access?

As Lanwench said, no.