How can I get around the Outlook 2007 2.0 GB limit on a .pst file

[Mike]

I recently upgraded to Outlook 2007 in an effort to get around the 2.0 GB
limit on the .pst file but much to my dismay and my bosses dismay, I find the
issue is still not corrected. We receive many large .pdf files and this is a
very severe issue. What can I do?

 

[Guest]

switch to UNICODE PST

 

[Mike]

Can you tell me what the pros and cons are? This is for a client and I do
not want to screw him all up.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

Can you tell me what the pros and cons are? This is for a client
and I do
not want to screw him all up.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830336/en-us

There is a max size for Unicode PST files. Tell your "client" to
learn to use the auto-archive feature in Outlook to move out old items
into an archive file. You can even enable auto-archiving on archive
files to chain them together so, for example, you could have 5 archive
files chained together so you have your current store and 5 archive
stores (where the last one permanently deletes). If each
auto-archived a year longer than the previous one then you have 6
years' worth of e-mails before they get permanently deleted - but then
you could still go back to your backups - and anyone that doesn't do
backups has obviously decided that their data is unimportant. Note:
for auto-archiving to work on any message store, including archives,
they must be opened in Outlook (which also provides the benefit that
the user can search through them, too, for old items).

 

[Mike]

Actually, they receive these huge .pdf files every day and they do perform
some type of transferring of files to a desktop folder or an auxillary hard
drive, I believe. I am not there except to work on the computers and thewir
Outlook periodically, so I am not entirely certain how they work with their
..pdf files but I am told that they do try to move them to avoid the 2.0 GB
limit. Not too certain what the "client" thing meant but they have been one
of my best clients for the past 6 years and I would like to make them happy.
I know Outlook Express does not have any limit but they really want to use
Outlook.

Any additional help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike

 

[VanguardLH]

Actually, they receive these huge .pdf files every day and they do
perform
some type of transferring of files to a desktop folder or an
auxillary hard
drive, I believe. I am not there except to work on the computers
and thewir
Outlook periodically, so I am not entirely certain how they work
with their
.pdf files but I am told that they do try to move them to avoid the
2.0 GB
limit. Not too certain what the "client" thing meant but they have
been one
of my best clients for the past 6 years and I would like to make
them happy.
I know Outlook Express does not have any limit but they really want
to use
Outlook.

They should not be using an e-mail client for file storage. The
presumption is that they save the attached file if they want it.
Since they saved a copy of the attached file, and to eliminate severe
bloat in their e-mail client's message store, they should then delete
the attached file from the e-mail (open the e-mail in its own window,
right-click the attachment, and select Remove). There are 3rd party
programs that will walk through all the e-mails to remove attachments,
like http://www.sperrysoftware.com/Outlook/Attachment-Save.asp (which
can save and remove and even provide a link in the e-mail to the saved
copy that got stored in some standard path).

OE does have a *practical* limit on the size of its database file.
The .dbx files should not exceed 100MB to avoid corruption.