# Solved: Outlook PST Cleanup



## Drama (Dec 21, 2006)

Hi all,

I need a couple suggestions for cleaning up one of my users .pst files. I have read many threads, but my issue seems a little different. Any help is always appreciated. Here's my situation:

My user has a laptop at home and desktop at work. When they work from home (via VPN), they map their drives and Outlook is configured to use the same .pst as the desktop. They now are getting "max email limits" because of duplicate Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted, etc... folders. 
I believe this person has had ongoing .pst file problems before. They have about 3 different pst files backed-up that I have been imported into each other. BLAH,BLAH,BLAH.....here are my questions:

1. Is there a way to remove the duplicate folders?
2. Is there a way to create a new, fresh .pst file with only the folders needed. Can you "pick and choose" the folders?
3. Any other suggestions on how to clean-up this mess?

Thanks for any help,


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## jimr381 (Jul 20, 2007)

You can make a clean pst file and then open up the other pst files as secondary ones via "File">>"Open">>"Outlook Data File." When they are open you can drag and drop the folders you want into the new clean pst file that Outlook is using.


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## Drama (Dec 21, 2006)

duh.....OMG, I didn't realize it was so simple! I completely over thought this one.
I'll have the laptop on Friday, so I'll give it a go then. Thank you so much for the suggestion!


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## jimr381 (Jul 20, 2007)

Not a problem if you need further assistance feel free to post.


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## djangojazz (Apr 11, 2006)

Drama said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I need a couple suggestions for cleaning up one of my users .pst files. I have read many threads, but my issue seems a little different. Any help is always appreciated. Here's my situation:
> 
> ...


That's why Outlook sucks is the dang .pst file association. I took this approach with people that still use Outlook, I use Thunderbird 2.0 myself and it can import directly from Outlook if you want to try something new.

Anyways with Outlook it can run duplicates. You may set up multiple .pst files as archives and yes they clog limits. Export your archived .pst's, which means you have to know the active ones. Simply go:

Start>Control Panel>Mail>data files>Open folder path>"(yourdata)".pst
(see attached pic)

It's pretty needlessly complex and yes users can and will create multiple .pst's with doing archives. You may get rid of the excess .pst files and it will help your user immensely. I did this just yesterday on a user that had Outlook 2003 with 2 pst files (one of them archives they never even use) and one current that guess what had sub folders called "archives" under her inbox. She also had Business Contact Manager version 3 which has a preinstalled sql server for it that always get conflicted. I asked her if she used the Biz Contact Manager and she said not anymore, great that thing is a POS I've had problems with anyone that has ever used it. I removed the archive .pst file and the biz contact manger and she works fine with one and she has about 1,500 messages or so in multiple folders and sub folders.

Generally you need people to understand unless they have an exchange server or other mail server method an email client like Outlook has limits it can reach and if even not it has limits that after exceeding will start to show significant slowdown. Generally if someone has 2,000 messages total I have seen on my hardware which is generally 3 years old and around the 2.0 ghtz range. Stuff get's slow, yet I'm sure people will come out and say I'm lying and that MS says 10,000 or higher. Yeah and you can run XP on what like 500 megz and 250 ram, but I wouldn't want to be on the computer that did it. Get your users to clean their desktop and if not they are asking for trouble if they think they can just get mail for eternity multiple times with multiple synchs. They shouldn't need to do this unless they are synching two computers or devices in which case an exchange server or biz talk server may be needed. I hope that helps.


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