Outlook 2000 .pst too large

[George Poulos]

My file was too large. I truncated it using PST2GB.EXE to below 2GB and then
ran SCANPST.EXE as recommended. It said there were some errors and
(presumably) repaired them. The problem is that OUTLOOK now sees only the
last few e-mail messages (even though the .pst file is nearly 2GB !).
Contacts, sent items etc., are empty folders. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

 

[K. Orland]

Did you run scanpst repeatedly until no errors were found?

 

[George Poulos]

Thanks Kathleen,

I just ran SCANPST again and it says "no errors found". However it also says
: "Folders found = 17 and Items found = 17", but I know that there are at
least 10,000 items in this pst file. Outlook seems to be finding only the
"new" items, i.e. post-crash items. Best Regards, George

 

[K. Orland]

How did you open your Outlook 2000 PST after you truncated it and scanned it?
Did you check to see if there are any subfolders to the Deleted Items folder?


Also, if you're missing items in your PST, do an Advanced find over the
entire set of Personal Folders. Normally it's set to check only the Inbox,
Sent Items, and Draft folders. Make sure you set it to check the whole
personal folders file and restart it. Also make sure you've checked ALL pst
files on your computer. Items could have been archived or you may have
created multiple PST files.

 

[George Poulos]

Thanks Kathleen

Following is what I did :
- copied the very large pst file and called the copy 'oldmailbox'
- truncated 'oldmailbox' into 'truncatedoldmailbox' and scanned the latter
until no errors reported (file size 1.9 GB)
- created a new 'personal folders' service with path to
'truncatedoldmailbox.pst'
- pointed OUTLOOK to this 'personal folders' to find only the "post-crash"
messages, with no contacts
- I tried advanced find on this particular 'personal folders' but it only
finds all the "post-crash" messages with no contacts.
- the file 'truncatedoldmailbox.pst' remains at +1.9 GB., but OUTLOOK can
only see a very small portion of it.

George

 

[K. Orland]

1.9 GB is still extremely large for an older Outlook PST and actually beyond
the size where it can corrupt and/or lose data. This usually happens around
the 1.6 GB mark. Have you tried compressing the data and then moving the data
you can see to a new PST?

 

[Brian Tillman]

- created a new 'personal folders' service with path to
'truncatedoldmailbox.pst'
- pointed OUTLOOK to this 'personal folders' to find only the
"post-crash" messages, with no contacts
- I tried advanced find on this particular 'personal folders' but it
only finds all the "post-crash" messages with no contacts.
- the file 'truncatedoldmailbox.pst' remains at +1.9 GB., but OUTLOOK
can only see a very small portion of it.

Well, the truncation process actually damages the PST (in a reasonably
controlled fashion) in such a way that SCANPST is likely to work, but the
very fact that it got too large and had to have some of its data wiped in
order to fix it certainly means that you lose some data and it's not exactly
predictable what part of the data you'll lose. It's conceivable that you
might be able to recover some more from it with
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/restoredeleteditemsfromanoutlookpst.htm
but it's still a crap-shoot.

 

[alan]

Your PST file is oversized. Microsoft Outlook 2002 and earlier versions limit the size of Personal Folders (PST) file to 2GB. Whenever the PST file reaches or exceeds that limit, you will not be able to open or load it any more, or you cannot add any new data to it. This is called oversized PST file problem. More detailed information can be found at http://www.datanumen.com/aor/problems/2gb-pst.htm
You can use Advanced Outlook Repair to solve the problem, by either converting it into Outlook 2003 format ( http://www.datanumen.com/aor/problems/convert-2gb-pst.htm ), or splitting it into smaller pieces ( http://www.datanumen.com/aor/problems/split-2gb-pst.htm )
http://www.datanumen.com/aor/ contains the detailed information about Advanced Outlook Repair.
And you can also download a free demo version at http://www.datanumen.com/aor/aor.exe

Alan

 

[M. Winner]

Did you run scanpst repeatedly until no errors were found?

 

[M. Winner]

I have a similar problem in that my file is too large as well. Where can I
find this PST2GB.EXE on my system? I did a search on my system but came up
"EMPTY". Or from where can I download this executable?

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

http://www.slipstick.com/problems/repair2gbpst.asp

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, M. Winner asked:

| I have a similar problem in that my file is too large as well. Where
| can I find this PST2GB.EXE on my system? I did a search on my system
| but came up "EMPTY". Or from where can I download this executable?
|
| "George Poulos" wrote:
|
|| My file was too large. I truncated it using PST2GB.EXE to below 2GB
|| and then ran SCANPST.EXE as recommended. It said there were some
|| errors and (presumably) repaired them. The problem is that OUTLOOK
|| now sees only the last few e-mail messages (even though the .pst
|| file is nearly 2GB !). Contacts, sent items etc., are empty folders.
|| Any help would be greatly appreciated.