Outlook too big

Hi All,

I got an annoying one for you guy.

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY. We are talking 30 GB PST
files. Yikes!

Is there any database program out there that
will save and catalog for quick (ha ha) search
gobs of [ancient, useless] Outlook eMails?

Many thanks,
-T

In message , T writes:
Hi All,

I got an annoying one for you guy.

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY. We are talking 30 GB PST
files. Yikes!

(I thought .pst files were deprecated, but anyway Can Outlook use more
than one .pst file? If so, maybe you could "archive" their older and/or
larger emails for them, so that they'd still be accessible, just from
the "archive" folder(s), and their everyday Outlook use would go
noticeably faster.

Is there any database program out there that
will save and catalog for quick (ha ha) search
gobs of [ancient, useless] Outlook eMails?

Many thanks,
-T
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

So, Heresy be damned (well, it would be, wouldn't it?).
Radio Times 24-30 July 2010 (page 24)

On 10/6/2017 11:16 PM, T wrote:
Hi All,

I got an annoying one for you guy.

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY.Â* We are talking 30 GB PST
files.Â* Yikes!

Is there any database program out there that
will save and catalog for quick (ha ha) search
gobs of [ancient, useless] Outlook eMails?

Many thanks,
-T

Have you already had them empty deleted items, and compact the file?

https://support.office.com/en-us/art...a-abe96dc8c7ef

Are you the DBA? You can export the pst file to a csv file, then load
that into a database, e.g. MySQL, SQLite, Oracle.

On 10/07/2017 01:21 AM, Mike S wrote:
You can export the pst file to a csv file, then load that into a
database, e.g. MySQL, SQLite, Oracle.


I was wondering if anyone had a program already developed to do such

On 10/07/2017 01:13 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
Can Outlook use more than one .pst file? If so, maybe you could
"archive" their older and/or larger emails for them, so that they'd
still be accessible, just from the "archive" folder(s), and their
everyday Outlook use would go noticeably faster.

Possibly. If both the archive folder and the regular folder
get loaded, there is no speed increase.

"T" wrote in message news
Hi All,

I got an annoying one for you guy.

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY. We are talking 30 GB PST
files. Yikes!

Is there any database program out there that
will save and catalog for quick (ha ha) search
gobs of [ancient, useless] Outlook eMails?

One of the big design problems with Outlook is that everything (all messages
from all email folders) is held in one gigantic PST file, unlike Windows
Live Mail (Win7 and above) and Windows Mail (Vista) which have one file per
email message, or Outlook Express (XP) which has one file per email folder.

This means that whenever a small change is made to the list of emails (eg
one message received), the whole PST file (30 GB in the example you give)
has to be copied again to backup drive, whereas WLM, WM and OE only require
new messages (WLM, WM) or changed folders (OE) to be copied to backup - this
takes much less time. Anything which takes a long time to copy is at risk of
not being done as often as it should be!




As well as deleting obsolete emails (eg those which are overtaken by later
events and are no longer relevant), check that your customers are compacting
the PST file periodically to remove dead wood.

T wrote:
Hi All,

I got an annoying one for you guy.

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY. We are talking 30 GB PST
files. Yikes!

Is there any database program out there that
will save and catalog for quick (ha ha) search
gobs of [ancient, useless] Outlook eMails?

Many thanks,
-T

I'd want to test this carefully before unleashing it...
Finding out how it works (first) is just as important
as this individual product - if a path is available,
maybe other products like this exist too.

https://www.techhit.com/outlook/stor...ilesystem.html

https://www.techhit.com/messagesave/

This beats the hell out of another web page I saw,
which encourages users to "sort" their email.
Can you imagine stepping through 30GB of email
a message at a time, and sorting it ? I can't.

Paul

In message , T writes:
On 10/07/2017 01:13 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
Can Outlook use more than one .pst file? If so, maybe you could
"archive" their older and/or larger emails for them, so that they'd
still be accessible, just from the "archive" folder(s), and their
everyday Outlook use would go noticeably faster.

Possibly. If both the archive folder and the regular folder
get loaded, there is no speed increase.


Yes, I was wondering about that.

My previous employer had something that had the potential to archive
emails over a certain age, or ones over a certain size after a shorter
time: the first time period might have been three months. (I think it
could also be invoked if a person's mailbox exceeded a certain size, but
I'm not sure about that.)

When things _had_ been archived, they took longer to open when accessed,
so obviously the archive whateveritis was _not_ being loaded when
Outlook was opened.

IIRR they had (at different times I think) at least two versions: one
where the emails in question disappeared from the inbox, and had to be
retrieved from something else (still presented to the user as if within
Outlook) - I think the something else developed the same folder
structure as the Inbox (not that that would matter to your customers -
if they never deleted anything, I doubt they made subfolders either); in
the other version (which I think came earlier), the archived emails
remained (as far as the user was concerned) in the same folders, but
were represented by a different icon.

I'm sorry, I've no idea what these systems were; as I say, they were
transparent or semitransparent to the user, who saw them from within
Outlook. But it does sound like your customers need something of this
nature - if, that is, Outlook can't be persuaded to use multiple .pst
files but only load the current one unless the old folder is accessed.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I'm not against women. Not often enough, anyway." - Groucho Marx

On Sat, 7 Oct 2017 09:13:54 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , T writes:
Hi All,

I got an annoying one for you guy.

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY. We are talking 30 GB PST
files. Yikes!

(I thought .pst files were deprecated, but anyway

No, not deprecated at all. Still the default for POP3 accounts and mail
archives, for example. IMAP accounts are more common now and they use
..ost files, so maybe that's what you were thinking. Even then, .pst
files are used for their archives and additional offline/local storage.

Can Outlook use more than one .pst file?

Of course. Only one of the additional .pst files can be designated as
the default archive file, (one per mailbox, that is), but that doesn't
stop a person from creating and using as many additional .pst files as
they want.

I used to work with an older lady who was quite organized with her
email. She had been with the company for years and years. She had set up
an auto-archive schedule that ran, without confirmation, every Monday
morning. It was mailbox-wide, so it looked through every folder for
emails that were more than 6 months old (configurable, of course) and
moved them to the same-named folder in the archive. If she created a new
folder in her Inbox, for example, 6 months later when emails in that
folder needed to be archived, the new folder would be auto-created in
the archive.

Auto-archive took care of managing the size of the primary .pst/.ost.
Part two of her story is that, in order to maintain a sane size for the
archive .pst, about every February she would create a new .pst and name
it for the prior year. Then she'd go through each folder in the archive
and move last year's emails to their own .pst.

If so, maybe you could "archive" their older and/or
larger emails for them, so that they'd still be accessible, just from
the "archive" folder(s), and their everyday Outlook use would go
noticeably faster.

Yes, absolutely, despite incorrect claims that splitting a large .pst
into multiple smaller .pst's doesn't gain any speed advantage.

--

Char Jackson

In message , Char Jackson
writes:
On Sat, 7 Oct 2017 09:13:54 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , T writes:
Hi All,

I got an annoying one for you guy.

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY. We are talking 30 GB PST
files. Yikes!

(I thought .pst files were deprecated, but anyway

No, not deprecated at all. Still the default for POP3 accounts and mail
archives, for example. IMAP accounts are more common now and they use
.ost files, so maybe that's what you were thinking. Even then, .pst
files are used for their archives and additional offline/local storage.

This was a corporate email system at a large company, with an "Outlook
server". I have no idea what the details were, other than that I'm
pretty sure it wasn't POP. I have vague memory of being told to switch
from .pst files - IIRR the IT department did it for those who had no
idea what that involved, which was most of them.

Can Outlook use more than one .pst file?

Of course. Only one of the additional .pst files can be designated as
the default archive file, (one per mailbox, that is), but that doesn't
stop a person from creating and using as many additional .pst files as
they want.

Can it be configured to show (the user) the existence of the various
..pst files, but not actually load them unless the user tries to access
one of them?

I used to work with an older lady who was quite organized with her
email. She had been with the company for years and years. She had set up
an auto-archive schedule that ran, without confirmation, every Monday
morning. It was mailbox-wide, so it looked through every folder for
emails that were more than 6 months old (configurable, of course) and
moved them to the same-named folder in the archive. If she created a new
folder in her Inbox, for example, 6 months later when emails in that
folder needed to be archived, the new folder would be auto-created in
the archive.

Smart lady! This sounds very like one of the archiving systems my
employer had set up as the default for all users (emails over I think it
was three months were transferred to a tree of identical structure
[actually limited to the "folders" _needed_] in the archive. I think it
also did mails over a certain size but only over say a week old).

Auto-archive took care of managing the size of the primary .pst/.ost.
Part two of her story is that, in order to maintain a sane size for the
archive .pst, about every February she would create a new .pst and name
it for the prior year. Then she'd go through each folder in the archive
and move last year's emails to their own .pst.

If so, maybe you could "archive" their older and/or
larger emails for them, so that they'd still be accessible, just from
the "archive" folder(s), and their everyday Outlook use would go
noticeably faster.

Yes, absolutely, despite incorrect claims that splitting a large .pst
into multiple smaller .pst's doesn't gain any speed advantage.

(Well, the main one is that your eggs are in more baskets.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual
rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand, quoted by Deb
Shinder 2012-3-30

In message , Paul
writes:
[]
I'd want to test this carefully before unleashing it...
Finding out how it works (first) is just as important
as this individual product - if a path is available,
maybe other products like this exist too.

https://www.techhit.com/outlook/stor...ilesystem.html

That (I haven't looked at it) does sound very attractive; I've always
thought of the multiple-emails-in-one-file mechanism used by many
(most?) email clients as a single-point-of-failure risk. I presume it
was originally done to save disc space (cluster size being then big
enough to store several emails) and possibly improve speed, but was
never ditched.

https://www.techhit.com/messagesave/

This beats the hell out of another web page I saw,
which encourages users to "sort" their email.
Can you imagine stepping through 30GB of email
a message at a time, and sorting it ? I can't.

Paul

No, but clicking on the size column so that Outlook sorts by that (or
the date, but I'd say size more important), and then dealing with the
biggest few (or those before a certain date) _might_ be productive. (Of
course, with a 30G file, I'd expect Outlook to appear to have frozen
after you do the click.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual
rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand, quoted by Deb
Shinder 2012-3-30

T wrote:

I have several customer on Outlook (no they
won't convert to Thunderbird) who WILL NOT
THROW ANYTHING AWAY. We are talking 30 GB PST
files. Yikes!

Is there any database program out there that
will save and catalog for quick (ha ha) search
gobs of [ancient, useless] Outlook eMails?

Use AutoArchive already built into Outlook. Nothing has to be thrown
away but might be better, especially for performance, to have a small
message store for the active messages.

For example, define autoarchive on the Inbox folder (if that is where
the users are storing their old e-mails instead of, say, Archive). Set
it to move items older than 1 year (or 5 years if they don't get that
much e-mail but keep everything they ever received) into an archive
folder. That will keep that message store down to 1 to 5 years worth of
e-mails.

Then open the archive folder in Outlook to see every e-mail older than 1
year. Set autoarchive on that folder to move items older than 2 years
into another archive folder. Then that archive folder has e-mails over
a year old but less than 2 years old. Repeat the procedure on each
archive folder using autoarchive to move an older set of messages into
another archive folder. The last archive folder must not have
autoarchive enabled so it ends up as the final repository for the oldest
messages. If you chain enough archive folders together, each holding 1
year's worth of messages (each archive autoarchiving 1 year older than
the archive that autoarchived into it), you could chain together, say,
10 archive files to have 10 year's worth of messages retained. Well,
more with the last archive being the last bucket in the chain to catch
the oldest messages.

The granularity is up to you. Each archive folder could have its
autoarchive move 1, 2, or 5 years worth of old messages into the next
archive in the chain. So if granularity was 5 years per archive, the
current message would hold 5 years of messages, the 1st archive the next
oldest 5 years worth, the next archive the next oldest 5 years worth,
and after about 5 archives there would be nearly more archives than the
age of the e-mail protocols.

Remember that you must open and leave open the old archive files so the
user can search through plus have Outlook exercise the autoarchive
function on that archive folder per that folder's individual autoarchive
settings. The global AutoArchive function must be enabled.
Autoarchiving settings of a folder are like a light switch in a room.
The global autoarchive option is like the master breaker in the breaker
box. How often the autoarchive rules for folders get exercised (per
those rules) depends on how often the global AutoArchive funtion is
executed. If you set a folder to autoarchive every day but the global
AutoArhive is set to run once per month, entries within the folder
become *eligible* for archiving after each day but nothing gets moved to
the archives until the global AutoArchive gets run. You can flip the
room light switch all you want but it won't work until whenever you
choose to flip the master breaker.

I've done this in the past. I'd have an autoarchive chain of 4 archive:
the current message store archives items over a year old, and each
archive, in turn, archives items over another year old. For 1-year
granularity in archiving, you set an archive folder's expiration to 1+N
years: 1 is the current message store's 1-year expiration into the 1st
archive and N is the position of the archive in the chain of them. If
granularity was 5 years, each archive's expiration would be 5 + 5*N.
For me, I had 1-year granularity for the archives but the last archive
didn't just have everything older than 5 years dumped into it. The last
archive added 1 more year for expiration but the action was to delete
(instead of move into another archive). That gave me 1 year for the
current message store and 5 years back in 1-year long archives.
Eventually my e-mail volume went down significantly so I only have 1
archive: current message store expires items older than 5 years into an
archive and the archive expires items older than 10 years by deleting
them.

Remember that the datestamp used for autoarchiving is based on the
Modified Date, not by the original Received Date. If the user touches a
file today, like moving it to a different folder within a
message/archive store then the datestamp gets touched to reflect today's
date.

Seems the the AutoArchive (set on a folder and also globally) is what
you're looking for. Just remember to open those archives in Outlook.
The user probably wants to get at those old messages. They have to be
open in Outlook for autoarchiving to get exercised on those folders that
have autoarchiving enabled on a folder and also with global AutoArchive
configured to run.

Example of an archive chain:

Inbox folder (year 1) autoarchive items
older than 1 year
into archive1
archive1 folder (year 2) autoarchive items
older than 2 years
into archive2
archive2 folder (year 3) autoarchive items
older than 3 years
into archive3
archive3 folder (year 4) autoarchive items
older than 4 years
into archive4
archive4 folder (year 5) autoarchive items
older than 5 years
into archive5
archive5 folder (year 6, last) autoarchive items
older than 6 years
delete them

If this is for a business, they probably have documentation lifespan
concerns, like documents surviving for 7, 10, or 20 years. In that
case, I would suggest changing the granularity to 5 years in the
autoarchive setting for each folder (Inbox, archive1, ... archive N).
They don't need to keep e-mails forever so a chain of 5 archives would
give them 35 years of e-mails. Mortgage companies need to keep records
longer; however, e-mails do not qualify as legal documents (despite them
getting used in court which would take me less than 5 minutes to destroy
use of that as evidence simply by showing the recipient can change
anything they want inside an e-mail, including the headers - UNLESS the
e-mails were signed which is not often used and most users don't know
how to set it up with their local e-mail clients while no webmail
clients support digital signatures).

By the way, the MS Outlook newsgroup is over at ---.
,--------------------------------------------------'
'--- microsoft.public.outlook.general

On 10/07/2017 06:13 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
By the way, the MS Outlook newsgroup is over at ---.
,--------------------------------------------------'
'--- microsoft.public.outlook.general


And it is almost unused

T wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

By the way, the MS Outlook newsgroup is over at ---.
,--------------------------------------------------'
'--- microsoft.public.outlook.general


And it is almost unused

You don't know a newsgroup is dead until you post to see if no one
responds. Lack of volume does not equate to void of participation. I
was just there to answer someone's Outlook question. If there is no one
there asking for help, just who is going to bother responding?

Of course, you could follow the flood of boobs that went to Microsoft's
Answers forums when Microsoft announced abandoning Usenet (in them
providing the peering NNTP server to Usenet, not that they were ever
there). The MVPs ran to the forums, too.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com