The Outlook Slim and Trim Plan!
1. Introduction
Almost everyone we work with uses Outlook as a massive filing system, saving emails into organized folders within Outlook, or never deleting their Deleted Items folder, or having thousands of emails sitting in their Inbox. Sounds familiar?
But there’s a problem with that: Outlook was never designed to be a file storage system. It really was designed more to be an email client for email ‘triage’ and light filing.
We strongly recommend you keep your Outlook file on a diet. Avoid corruption, speed up Outlook… even speed up boot times by keeping the Outlook file size in check.
Note: The following walkthrough, and associated screen shots, was done using Outlook 2003. But the process is very similar with most other versions of Outlook, including Outlook 2007.
2. What you Need To Know
Outlook stores all its information (e-mail, calendar, contacts, etc.) in a single file called ‘Outlook.pst’ (”pst” stands for Personal Store).
If not regularly maintained, this file can get large. While the technical maximum size of a PST file is 2 GB, problems, such as slowness opening Outlook or even slowness booting your computer, can occur well before then. We recommend keeping the size well below 500MB.
3. How big is my Outlook.pst file currently?
To find out, from within Outlook:
3.1 - Make sure your Navigation Pane is open: From the toolbar: View > Navigation Pane
3.2 - Right-click on ‘Personal Folders’, and then select ‘Properties for “Personal Folders”‘, as shown here:
3.3 - To see the size of your PST file, and the sizes of all the folders within it, on the next dialog box, click the Folder Size button. Here’s what you’ll see:
In this case, we have a PST file that is over 1GB in size – well over our recommended limit. We’ve got to work on that.
4. Basic Housekeeping
4.1 - When you delete it, delete it for real. Some people want save the files in the Deleted Items folder. Not a good practice. If you really are unsure about saving something, then move it to a folder. Deleted Items should be deleted.
Note: If you DELETE an email and it’s moved to the Deleted Items folder, make sure that either the Deleted Items folder is automatically emptied by Outlook (which is NOT the default) or be sure to periodically delete the items in the Deleted Items folder (we know, it doesn’t make much sense to have to delete items that are in a Deleted Items folder…).
To automatically empty the Deleted Items folder each time you exit Outlook, do the following from within Outlook:
- From the toolbar: Tools > Options > select the Other tab.
- At the top of the tab, click ‘Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting.’
- Click the Advanced Options button
- Set the value for the first option, ‘Warn before permanently deleting items.’ If you un-check this item, then Outlook will quietly delete items from the Deleted Items folder without notice every time you close the program. If you leave it checked, every time you have items in the Deleted Items folder and try to close Outlook, Outlook will ask you if you really want to delete the files. Your choice.
4.2 - Routinely clean out your Inbox. You Inbox is really the triage area. Get into the habit of either responding to emails, or moving them to folders. This is really just good time management skills.
Here’s my own personal rule of thumb about the Inbox: If the email in the Inbox would take two minutes or less to reply to/respond to/take care of/delete, I do it. If it’s longer than that, then it goes on a to-do list, or on my calendar, and gets OUT of my Inbox.
Inboxes with a thousand entries in them are both unmanageable and space-consuming. Practice Clean Inbox Hygiene.
5. Advanced Housekeeping, Step 1: Set up Auto Archiving
Who knew that Outlook has a built in archiving mechanism that is actually simple and useful to use! If you didn’t, now you do. And before I get the questions: “But I need instant access to every email I’ve ever sent or received at my very fingertips, and anyway, where does email go if I ‘archive’ it? How do I get to it? How could I possibly do without seeing everything in my Inbox or folders every day??…” you’ll have to make a leap of faith for just a moment and trust us. Read on.
You can set up Outlook to automatically ‘archive’ e-mail on a regular basis. What Outlook actually does is create another PST file, called Archive.pst, right alongside Outlook.pst, and moves archived e-mail to the Archive.pst folder, reducing the size of your main Outlook.pst file, in turn speeding up both computer boot time and Outlook boot time.
Here are the steps for Auto Archiving:
5.1 - From the toolbar: Tools > Options > click the Other tab > click the Auto Archive button. Here’s what it looks like, along with our recommended settings:
With these settings, Outlook will run the Auto Archive program every 14 days, and will archive items that are 6 months old or older. It will also show the archive folder in your folder list (more on that below).
5.2 - Be sure to click the button Apply these settings to all folders now. This will set these auto archiving rules for all of your personal folders in Outlook.
6. Advanced Housekeeping, Step 2: Run the Auto Archive NOW
To get Outlook to do an archival right now:
From the toolbar: Tools > Mailbox Cleanup > click the AutoArchive button
7. Advanced Housekeeping, Step 3: Compact Now
OK, here’s a tricky concept: If you delete items from your Outlook.pst file, or archive off to the Archive.pst file, the size of the Outlook.pst file will not change unless you compact the file. Huh? Well, the PST file is essentially a small database, and the way databases work is that they allocate space when files come in, and that space stays allocated even if the files leave. You need to compact a database for it to run through, find all the empty spaces, and condense everything. This is where the real memory and speed savings happen!
To Compact your PST file:
7.1 - In the Navigation Pane: Right Click Personal Folders > Properties > click the Advanced button. You’ll see a window similar to this:
7.2 - Click the Compact Now button, and let it run. This may take a while, depending on how big your file was to start with.
8. Check Your Work
Reboot your PC, and open Outlook. Right-click on Personal Folders > Properties > click Folder Size, and check the Total Size:
The size should be much more manageable. If it’s not less than 500MB, then we’d suggest you delete more items and/or re-visit your Auto Archive settings, re-run Auto Archive, and re-run Compact Now.
9. Finally: How to work with Archived E-mail
In step 5.1, above, if you chose to show the archive folder in your folder list, then you should already have access to all of your archive files right from within Outlook. Here’s what the navigation pane should look like:
You can always hide the archive folder by right-clicking Archive Folder and choosing Close “Archive Folders”
You can show the archive folder by going to the toolbar: File > Open > Outlook Data File… > select archive, and click OK.
10. Conclusion: Outlook Hygiene = Happiness
All right, this last title might be just a bit too geeky. But no one likes a slow machine. No one wants to lose e-mail due to corruption. Stay clean. Keep your Outlook Fit and Trim!
- Randy Garland 123 Technology