Microsoft Mail (Outlook / Outlook Express / Windows Mail)Post questions relating to your Microsoft Mail client here. Please make sure you specify your mail client in your post
Mission Statement
WindowsBBS is an online community dedicated to easily accessible technical support for those using Microsoft operating systems and other Windows software.
Our goal is to become the leading resource for computer users that require assistance with their day-to-day computer usage, including full support for networking PC's, virus & malware removal, system upgrades and general support questions.
I have in past posts described problems opening downloaded mail in OE and it has been suggested that they are caused by large mail folders. I have about 6.5GB of emails spread over 15 folders, but some folders are approaching 1GB. I am considering changing from OE to Outlook to see if it performs any better, but I would appreciate some comments from others before I do so.
1. I would like to archive most of my older emails to DVD and remove them from the hard drive but have been reluctant to do so because of the difficulty getting them back into OE so I can read them. If I import them into Outlook and archive the resulting .pst folder, how difficult is it to get them back into Outlook so I can read them in future? Is it possible to direct Outlook to a specific .pst folder after I copy it from DVD back to the hard drive? It was suggested to me that I might do this by keeping the archive .pst files with different file extensions, and when I wanted Outlook to pick up a particular .pst file so I could read the archive, I would temporarily change it back to .pst after copying back to the HDD and change the existing .pst file's extension to something else before starting Outlook. Would this work?
2. If I am able to create a .pst folder just for archived emails, would it be possible to re-import these back into OE if I decide to go back to it sometime in the future? What would this do to the emails already in the OE folders? Do the imported emails just get added to whatever is already there?
Thanks.
Alistair
Didn't find the information you thought to find? Check out these Similar Threads
Thanks Steve. Sounds like a useful function. If that archive.pst file is copied to a DVD and deleted from the HDD, will Outlook pick it up again if it is at some time copied back into the Outlook HDD folder it was originally in? I want to gain HDD space so want to remove the folders, but also want to be able to easily read the emails if necessary in future.
If that archive.pst file is copied to a DVD and deleted from the HDD, will Outlook pick it up again if it is at some time copied back into the Outlook HDD folder it was originally in?
Yes, but (obviously) only containing mail that is archived in the actual archive.pst file.
You could create multiple copies by renaming the archive file every time you copy one to a DVD. You would choose a new name for the (new) Archive file on your PC after removing/archiving to DVD of the previous one.
Thanks Arie. About 15 years ago I used Outlook but gave up on it and went to OE because the .pst file grew so large (by the standards of the day) that my primitive computer couldn't handle it and kept crashing. The .pst file now will be huge. Does this cause any problems in modern versions of Outlook? Does it start in reasonable time despite having to load a huge file? I have XP SP3 running on a Toshiba Tecra S2 notebook with 1GB of RAM.
From my experience handling other people's comp problems, PST files over 1 GB are prone to problems, even in newer versions of Outlook.
The archive feature is meant to be used regularly. While it's nice to have instant access to messages that are old, I have found it quite unnecessary to have them loaded in a PST all the time. There are few legit reasons one would need to view messages older than a few months.
Archive your PSTs and/or OE mail folders, keep the current mailboxes clean and lean, open old messages when the need arises.
For efficiency, I name archived PSTs this way: <international date><account or name>.pst
Examples: 2009-02-17-cox.pst 2009-02-17-gmail.pst
You can similarly archive your OE folders by copying them somewhere & then deleting the originals. But retain the Pop3uidl.dbx file. The rest of the default mail folders will get auto recreated next time you run OE (empty of course).
Thanks Tony. One reason for possibly going to Outlook from OE is that in Outlook, it seems easier to archive old emails off the HDD and get them back again when needed. Getting OE to open emails archived onto a DVD and copied back for reference can be be cumbersome whereas it seems relatively simple in Outlook.
What sort of problems do you experience in Outlook when the outlook.pst file gets large?
Well, large PSTs are the problem. Realize that a 5 GB PST must load in Outlook every time its started up. It takes a longer time to start Outlook and the chances of the PST corrupting increases in ration to the bsize of the PST. ALL your data, the messages, calander, notes, attachments, etc, are stored in 1 single file, the PST.
Such a large file require lots of RAM and lots of page file use. And anything less than a current dual core or quad core CPU is asking for trouble with such large files.
Unlesss you have backups you could lose it all to some computer glitch. All it takes is one malformed message on the mail server and it can prevent Outlook from downloading any messages. And AFAIK, there's no separate buttons for send & receive, thus the mail program is rendered useless by that one corrupt message on the server.
But the advantage of Outlook is that from the File Menu you can load many PSTs and then select out the messages and stuff that you want, move them to a different PST and then close the unneeded PSTs, and the next time you start Outlook the only PST that gets loaded is the current one.
I manage 7 email accounts for personal & business and my mailbox is under 100 MB. The old messages get backed up and I've not needed any messages from the backups yet. I also don't save the jokes and goofy pictures and videos that I receive, I delete those message after I read them, the ones I want to keep I save to disk.
Thanks for your comments, Tony. The storing of everything in one file was what put me off Outlook years ago. I didn't know about archiving then, but I also had a corruption on a couple of occasions and although I had backups and didn't lose anything major, recovering from the problem wasted a lot of time. I've just looked again at the Outlook file menu and it looks like it will open archived .pst files directly from DVD if desired, without having to copy them back to HDD. Looks like a much easier process than OE so easier to keep the file size down.
I have OE emails in a number of folders. If I import these into Outlook, do you know if each folder will go into a separate .pst file, or do they get lumped into one huge .pst file that will be so large I then have problems with Outlook?
As you may guess, I'm paranoid about this as I remember the days wasted with Outlook all those years ago when we talked MB rather than the GB we talk about now.
Outlook Express > File Menu > Export > Messages > Selected Folders
will export the folder & contents to Outlook. Next time you run Outlook the existing PST will contain the exported folder & messages.
For example, it have a folder in OE called My Work Mail, if you export that folder, then run Outlook, Outlook will contain a new folder called My Work Mail with the messages in it. But if export the OE Inbox, the messages will go directly to the Outlook Inbox; same for Deleted, Sent, Drafts (default folders in both).
This is proving to a frustrating exercise. I took the plunge and imported the OE folders into Outlook. Took a few hours but went OK except that one folder didn't import. The folder was created in Outlook but is empty. I tried exporting that folder from OE but it wouldn't export. The folder behaves perfectly in OE but there's obviously something odd about it.
I then tried the file-archive process in Outlook and selected a couple of folders to archive. It gave me the message it was archiving, created the archive.pst file and the archive folder shows in the folder list in Outlook. But, the archive folder is empty and the archive.pst file is only 150kB when it should be about 500MB. I've followed exactly the instructions in Outlook help for archiving and for viewing archived folders, but no luck. The archiving process took less than a minute so I guessed something was wrong.
I can live with the missing folder, although if anyone can suggest what could be wrong I would be grateful. However, the inability to archive the folders is annoying as it is the main reason I want to change from OE to Outlook.
I use Outlook 2003 so at 6GB well below the apparent maximum of 20GB. The second link above is interesting. I actually tried that method of manually moving messages to the archive folder that was created by file-archive process but into which Outlook then did not move any messages. That worked OK, but I would rather the normal archive process did it. In Windows Explorer, I then tried to drag the archive.pst file to a different location. I got an error message that said the file was in use. I closed Outlook down and tried again. Same error message. I noticed that even though I had closed Outlook down, the Outlook icon still showed in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen (is that called the system tray?). I couldn't get rid of it. Right-clicking gave me the option of opening Outlook but nothing to get rid of the icon. I wonder if the presence of the icon was why I couldn't move the archive file. I restarted the computer (but not Outlook) and was then able to move the archive file using Windows Explorer. That means I'll be able to move it to DVD, but only if I haven't previously started Outlook. Another problem - when I shut the computer down, I closed Outlook properly then did a normal shutdown of the computer. After restart I fired up Outlook again and got the message that the data file "personal folders" had not been closed properly and needed to be checked, a lengthy process. What could have caused this problem? I can't help wondering if it related to the presence of the Outlook icon in the system tray. Then, when Outlook started I got an error message telling me that the archive pst file I'd moved could not be found and kept prompting me to find it. I shut down Outlook and when I restarted I got this message again. Does this always happen if a pst file is moved? How can it be prevented?
I'm at a loss to understand why my change to using Outlook should be so full of problems. All help gratefully received!
Manage the Outlook pst via the Mail applet in Control Panel (removing completely)
From Outlook File menu you should be able to open any PST and by rt clicking the PST top folder in its tree in the left frame you can "stop using it".
Truely, the best way to switch from OE to Outlook is to install Outlook and it creates the PST when an account is created. Then run OE and spend some time organizing the messages, get rid of old ones, back 'em up, delete the folders in OE after they have been backed up; trim down the OE significantly. Then export from OE to Outlook.
On my desktop computer I still use Courier (a mail client available via windowsbbs sister site, rosecitysoftware.com. It uses 1 mailbox file for everything, is easy to backup & open other mailbox files. http://www.rosecitysoftware.com/courier/
Thanks Tony. Using Control Panel seems to work. I'm a bit puzzled by the fact that when I create a new pst file using Control Panel and give it a name such as "Sent Items 2008", it appears in the Outlook folder tree in the left of the Outlook window as "Personal". If I add more, I end up with a list of folders called "Personal". There seems to be no way I can make them show the actual file name I entered when I created the file so a bit cumbersome to handle. The pst file itself has the correct name when I navigate to its folder.
