Tired of slow send, receives, searches, and just about everything else in Microsoft Outlook? Yeah, we thought so. The problem most people have with Microsoft Outlook's slow performance comes from having an overly large.pst file. Your.pst file is the file Outlook uses to organize and store your email messages. All new and old messages are found in the same.pst file unless they've been deleted.
Why does Outlook get slower?
As mentioned in the above paragraph, Outlook uses the same.pst file to store all messages sent to and from Outlook. When the.pst file gets too large, the software is having to manipulate a larger and larger database and it simply takes more and more time to do that as the file size grows. If the database gets too large it will actually cause errors within Microsoft Outlook causing program errors, complete program failures, or worse data loss!
So How Do We Fix It?
To begin saving space and cut down the size of the.pst file you currently have, begin by clicking on "File" and click on "Data File Management." Next, on the new menu that says "Outlook Data Files," left-click the button that says "Add." After that left click the option for "Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst) unless you are using Outlook 97 - 2002. Name the file something relative to what will be going in it. A good example would be "Work Mail 2011." Then left-click OK so that the file is saved in the default location.
Close the next box that is available by clicking close. You will now notice the new folder under "Personal Folders," but on its own branch. It will be named " Work Mail 2011" or whatever you named it. If you already have folders ready to be pushed into the archive, simply drag and drop them. If not, right-click the area that holds the messages you wish to store away. Left-click the option for "Advanced Find." Choose the search type tab for "Advanced" by clicking it. Under "Define more criteria," hover over the field that says "Date and Time" and then left-click the field that says "received." In the dialogue box that pops up but a time frame. For example, type 01/01/2011 and 12/31/2011 to get all of 2011. Left-click OK and then left-click "Find Now."
You should now have a list of all of 2011's messages in the results box. Click any of them once, and then using your keyboard hold control and press the letter "A" once. This will highlight all the options. Once that's done, right-click any one of the options and left click the option that says "Move to folder." Lastly, choose your newly made archive by left-clicking it and pressing OK. Watch as all of 2011's files zoom to their own archive and make your current.pst file smaller. Repeat these steps for all previous years as you see fit until you reach the first year. If necessary you can create even smaller files just by putting thought toward how you name them. For example, "First Six Months of 2011" and "Last Six Months of 2011."
Lastly, create a.pst file for the current year. After doing so, right click "Inbox" and any other folders under "Personal Folders" and left-click properties, one by one. Left-click the tab that says "Auto Archive" and left-click the radio button option that says "Archive items in this folder using the default settings." The default settings are more than sufficient to make sure your regular.pst file stays pretty small and all your new emails, except the ones you delete, get cleaned out and archived every few months automatically.
All Done!
At this point your.pst file should be dramatically smaller, your important emails have been stored away safely, you have a lot less to worry about when it comes to file corruption, and Outlook is performing much smoother and faster! To get the full affect of what you've just done, your next steps are to perform a scan disk and then a system defrag.
If you need help performing any of these tasks, please feel free to visit TeksOnDemand's website at http://www.teksondemand.com/content/microsoft-office or give us a call at 1-800-843-8457. Thank you for your time and happy computing!
by Kaleb M. Felder
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