Reducing the size of the outlook.pst file

[Teresa]

I am trying to get my outlook.pst file down to a size that
will fit on a CD for back up. If I right-click on Outlook
Today (personal folders) and ask for file size, it tells
me that the file size is 381,113 KB, if I look at it in
Windows Explorer, it is 667,952 KB! Can anyone explain why
such a difference exists?

 

[Chau Le]

If anyone hasn't told ya... here ya go:

PST FILES ONLY GROWS, WILL NEVER GET SMALLER.

The files and folders that you delete hold as "white space". Create a new
pst and move what you need over to that. The original pst will not "shrink"
in size.

Hope that helps

-C-

 

[Brian Tillman]

I am trying to get my outlook.pst file down to a size that
will fit on a CD for back up. If I right-click on Outlook
Today (personal folders) and ask for file size, it tells
me that the file size is 381,113 KB, if I look at it in
Windows Explorer, it is 667,952 KB! Can anyone explain why
such a difference exists?

First, a CD will hold 600 to 700 Mbytes, so your PST file should fit just
fine. Second, the size reported by Outlook is the size occupied by the used
space within the file, but the size Windows reports is the allocated space
on disk. Try compacting the file. If that doesn't work, create a new PST
and copy everything in your old PST to it. Put the new PST on CD.
--
Brian Tillman
Smiths Aerospace
3290 Patterson Ave. SE, MS 1B3
Grand Rapids, MI 49512-1991
Brian.Tillman is the name, smiths-aerospace.com is the domain.

I don't speak for Smiths, and Smiths doesn't speak for me.