Unofficial poll on size of database

[Jon Connell]

Just curious as to the size of database users have. To find the size, open
the Microsoft User Data folder in your Documents folder. Look inside your
Identity folder ( eg. Office X Identities, Office 2004 Identities ) and
locate your current Identity (named Main by default,click on the database
file in column view in the Finder and you'll see the size listed.

Just shy of 1GB, but I tend to auto-delete stuff older than a year and I
also try and delete large attachments, saving them to disk beforehand if
I need them.

I've noticed that the UI does not allow deletion of attachments, but
AppleScript does. Assuming that they do actually get deleted from the
server (!) the following script might be of use to people ...

http://linkstation.figsandfudge.com/files/Delete_Attachments.zip

Save to your 'Entourage Script Menu Items' to run from the scripts menu.
It accepts the selection of multiple messages and (use with care!) will
delete all attachments of all selected messages. There's no way to abort
the process once it starts as dialog boxes can only have 3 buttons and I
opted for Yes/No/All. Probably a bit un-Mac like, but it seemed to make
sense to me.

Jon

 

[Tony Hacche]

Just curious as to the size of database users have. To find the size, open
the Microsoft User Data folder in your Documents folder. Look inside your
Identity folder ( eg. Office X Identities, Office 2004 Identities ) and
locate your current Identity (named Main by default,click on the database
file in column view in the Finder and you'll see the size listed.

1.21GB

Imac 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, OS X v10.4.10

Tony

 

[Pitch]

Mine is 1.1 Gigs.

I run off the (very likely erroneous) assumption that a smaller
database, with fewer emails and fewer attachments, is less like to get
corrupted. So I've gathered a bunch of tricks to consistently trim
down my database:

1. Delete the Unwanted Deletes. I've created a Mail View that collects
a wide assortment of emails in the Deleted Items Folder, which are
mainly from newsgroups, banks, businesses and others that I really
don't need to keep. I highlight them all and delete.

2. Large Attachments. Another Mail View that finds all emails with
attachments bigger than 1 Meg in both the Deleted Items and Sent Items
that do not have the category "Keep Large Attachment". I scan the
results, attach the "Keep Large" category to the ones that I want to
keep, then highlight the rest and run the Message: Remove All
Attachments thingie.

3. Archive Each Year. Around January each year, I make a backup copy
of the database and name it 2006 or whatever year. Then in the present
copy, I heavily delete most Sent and Deleted emails going back 6
months or further, delete old project folders, and then run the
compact function.

Probably all based on a false paranoid premise of "smaller is more
stable" but there you go.

 

[Pitch]

Whoops. After running the compact function just now, my database is
485 Megs. More normal size for me.

 

[William Smith]

Just shy of 1GB, but I tend to auto-delete stuff older than a year and I
also try and delete large attachments, saving them to disk beforehand if
I need them.

At some point (and you've probably hit it) your database will stop
growing so long as you continue your cleanup routines.

Databases will grow dynamically but will shrink only when compacted.
They don't shrink on their own. As you delete items you make holes for
new items to fill and your database stays the same size. This is
actually a good thing and makes your database more stable rather than
compacting and expanding over and over.

The more you know... ;-)

--

bill

William M. Smith
(Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows)

 

[Lynn Q]

The largest one reported so far. Seems I remember someone reporting they had
a 9 GB database. Now that one I would consider large.

Keep on sending in your database size. Thanks to everyone that has
participated so far.

Oh, dear. I hate to have to say my database currently stands at 7.89 GB;
however, this includes a mountain of e-mails from Outlook 2003 that I
transferred over.

Also, I have an "old database" that shows over 11 GB. Can I delete this
file safely?

Thank you!

Lynn

 

[Diane Ross]

Oh, dear. I hate to have to say my database currently stands at 7.89 GB;
however, this includes a mountain of e-mails from Outlook 2003 that I
transferred over.

Entourage can handle large databases. As long as you aren't having any
problems then you are OK. I do suggest backups for any size database.

Also, I have an "old database" that shows over 11 GB. Can I delete this
file safely?

The "old database" is a duplicate that Entourage makes when rebuilding the
database. You can safely throw it away once you are satisfied with the
rebuild.