Compact PST to reduce the chances of corruption

MS Outlook is an exhaustively used email management application across the globe by millions of users. MS Outlook creates a PST file for storing all the information received, sent or created using this application. You can also term PST files as the repository of MS Outlook that is used for saving email items such as contacts, tasks, messages, calendar information etc. With the versions of MS Outlook that are available in the market, PST files are usually created in two formats- ANSI and UNICODE.

ANSI PST file is the format of older versions (97, 2000 and 2002) of MS Outlook and have a physical size limit on PST (ANSI) files of around 2 GB. This means that if the size of PST files exceeds the 2GB size, user would not be able to work with Outlook as the file becomes inaccessible. Also, the increasing size of PST can result in corruption of Outlook PST file. Varied performance issues of PST files also suggest a user to limit the size of PST or compact PST file size.

When the size of Outlook pst file increases it affects the performance of Outlook by slowing down the Outlook processes. User can act smart if he decides to compact PST before the file touches the threshold size of 2GB. Compact your PST files as this is the ideal way to combat PST corruption and further save your data from possible loss situation. You can follow the steps given below to compact PST file in Outlook 2007:

1.Launch MS Outlook 2007
2.Select File > Data File Management option. "Account Settings" dialog appears
3.Select the Data Files tab
4.Select the Personal Storage Table (PST) file
5.Click the Settings button. "Personal Folders" dialog appears
6.Click the Compact Now button. Outlook will start freeing up the extra space in the PST file
7.Click OK after the compaction process completes successfully
8.Click the Close button to exit

Although, this option in MS Outlook 2007 will help you to compact PST but its limitation is that it simply empties the extra space in PST without offering any other flexibility to manage data in the PST file. On the contrary, compact PST tool offers its users an array of flexibility to manage their PST data.

Using Compact PST tool, a user can not only compact PST file but also compress PST files as well as all attachments in them. In addition to this, the user has the following options:

1. Compress all attachments in new PST
2. Remove all attachments in new PST
3. Remove all attachment from new PST file and save them in another folder
4. Remove all attachments from new PST to save and compress them in another folder.

This way you have the power to save and manage the attachments in your PST files as per your requirement.

This wondrous compact PST tool allows the users to compress multiple PST files in a single cycle. Up to 2147483648 PST files can be compressed in a single compress cycle. Try its free evaluation version to get a fair idea of its working and features. The free version works just like the full version but it saves only the first 5 emails per folder after compression.