Maximum Notebook Size

[Thomas M.]

OneNote 2007

Can anyone tell me if there is a maximum file size for OneNote 2007
notebooks?

Also, I know from experience that Outlook PST files have a certain size
threshold--something like 500-600 MB--where the probability of file
corruption greatly increases. Is there anything like that with OneNote
books?

Thanks for any help that you can offer!

--Tom

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

Outlook versions through 2002 were limited (loosely) to 2GB before
corruption became likely. In reality some of them corrupted at 1.8 or even
1.7 GB but roughly 2GB was their limit. Outlook 2003 introduced the UNICODE
PST file which is theoretically limited only by available disk space but is
soft limited (by registry setting) to about 20GB.

OneNote has no such limit, though obvious the bigger the file the more
likely you'll see performance issues. Where that envelope is depends a lot
upon your machine though. I've worked with some pretty big notebooks and
never noticed any particular performance lag - if you've got a decent
machine with a lot of RAM you could probably create some monstrous notebooks
without much of a problem.

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/outlook.htm
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/ol4law-amazon

 

[Thomas M.]

Thanks for the reply. I didn't know that about PST files. I know that
we've seen a number of them corrupt at around 600-700 MB, but maybe there
were some other factors involved in those instances.

Anyway, thanks for the information.

--Tom

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

Yes, PST files (especially the old binary ones) CAN corrupt at nearly any
size for a variety of reasons - one of the most notable ones being storing
your default message store on a network drive with high latency, but they
don't generally corrupt for size reasons until you get into the neighborhood
of 2GB.

The relative instability of PST files is one of the big reasons why if you
have an Exchange server you're almost always better off using the Exchange
mailbox as your default delivery location rather than a PST file. PST files
are o.k. as archives but not great as default mail stores. The newer
UNICODE PST files are somewhat better in this regard, but if you have an
Exchange server they're still not as good a solution as the Exchange
mailbox.

Tying back to our topic here, by the way, if you're a big Outlook user (and
most of you are), then hopefully you're taking advantage of all of the
integration possibilities between Outlook and OneNote. Here's an article
about that, if you're interested:
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/onenote/onandol.htm

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/outlook.htm
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/ol4law-amazon