Rules Limit of 32k

[John Schneider]

Just tried to add another rule in Outlook 2003, and got the error "One or
more rules could not be uploaded to Exchange server and have been
deactivated. This could be because some of the parameters are not supported
or there is insufficient space to store all of your rules."
I did a little digging and found out that there is a 32k limit to the size
of all rules. I have dozens of clients and need a rule to move mail from the
inbox to the client specific folder. Also have many other rules to move
messages to specific folders. The whole idea in using rules is to save time
by not having to manually move messages. I read the KB article
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;886616) about
workarounds, but there just is not enough there to make a significant
difference.
Does anyone know of a way to increase the size of the rules? Can any of the
MVPs tell me if this issue is going to be addressed, either by a patch or at
least in a future version of Outlook?
This is VERY frustrating!!!!!!!!!

 

[Noel All]

There isn't a way to increase the 32k limit and it isn't an Outlook problem
but an Exchange issue, I did hear that there "could" be some movement in
getting this changed in further versions of Exchange but it is only a
rumour. If you just moving mail have you considered using Outlook 2003 new
Search folders.

 

[John Schneider]

Thanks for the reply Noel. It is hard to believe that there is a limit to
the size of the rules and that the designers just arbitrarily picked 32k. At
least this isn't as bad as the old PST file size limit!

I'm not aware of the Search folders functionality. While I poke around
looking for information on this, can you direct me to some information on
this topic?

Thanks again.

 

[Noel All]

Hi John,
Not sure it was arbitrary at least if you consider that 32k for everyone
especially in a large organisation could bring Exchange to its knees not in
drive space but in processing power anyway here is a link to an audio
training session on Outlook Search folders
http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC010778621033

 

[John Schneider]

Noel,

Thanks again for the response. I'll give the search folders a look-see, but
for now I'm back with all my rules. One of the items in the KB article I
quoted below had to do with moving your PST file to a location with the
shortest path possible. I moved it to C:\ and was able to get all my rules
running again.

Also, FYI for anyone reading this, the problem with the 32K limit has to do
with the packet size for RPC calls. Doesn't look like there will be much MS
can do about this, but I'm sure they will come up with something cute at some
point in the future. Also, the reason this problem reared its ugly head with
Outlook 2003 is that the unicode format of the file effectively cut your
capacity in half. In older versions of Outlook, the rules were stored as (I
believe) ANSI. With Unicode requiring 2 bytes of storage for each single
byte in ANSI, this cuts the space for rules in half. However, if you change
the path of your PST file (assuming your rules move stuff to the PST file),
you can gain a good chunk of space. My old path was "C:\Documents and
Settings\MyNameHere\My Documents\MyStuff.pst". Changing that to "C:\js.pst"
allowed me to reactivate 5 rules that there was previously no room for.

I still have one question on this topic. Is there any way to tell how big
your rules data area is? Apparently, they are not kept in a separate file,
but are stored within the PST file? If I export my current rules, the file
size is 20k, but I'm sure that does not reflect the size used in Outlook.

John

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

There's no definitive way to tell how large your rules are, your method is a
good estimate.

The 32K limit was coded in when memory was far smaller than today and that
was estimated at the time as a good size. In addition, MAPI has a 32K limit
per pop when it uses GetProp, so anything larger would be truncated. If and
when Exchange ever moves to a SQL database is when we can expect the rules
limit to be lifted or expanded. Otherwise a change would break backwards
compatibility.

Rules previously stored their text as ANSI, now in Outlook 2003 it's
Unicode, so double the size for any text.