Cutting 2 GB .PST, .OST Files Down To Size
Yo! Hi Fred. As always, Thanx for a great newsletter and all the goodies you unearth. RE: Outlook Express lost inbox ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-10-09.htm#7 ). Looks like the dreaded Outlook 2 GB monster. An Inbox above 2 GB will crash. The .DBX files are in fact there and usable , but the .PST or .OST is now corrupt . Microsoft offers a free tool to recover these. Hope this helps your readers. Peace. ---Andy
Thanks, Andy. The "dreaded Outlook 2 GB monster" is
real, and applies to Outlook Express 5.0 and 6.0 (which store e-mail in .DBX
files), as well as Outlook 97, 98, 2000 and 2002 (which store e-mail in .PST and
.OST files). We've actually covered it several times in the past:
http://tinyurl.com/yhnpht
For Outlook Express, most of the utilities listed in the LangaList item you
referenced repair "2 GB" corruption.
The Microsoft recovery tool you mentioned doesn't "fix" Outlook mail files.
Instead, it "truncates" them to bring your .PST or .OST file down to size---
well below the 2 GB limit--- so Outlook can read the file again. Microsoft
actually calls it a "crop tool." What does it "crop"? Well, some of your
messages. The "recovered" file is simply missing megabytes of e-mail; all the data that above the 2GB limit
is thrown away!
Making sure your .PST or .OST file never exceeds 2 GB is the best protection
against this limitation. But if your Outlook mail file does grow that large and
you need to recover most of your e-mail using Microsoft's tool, here's how to do
it. Go here ( http://tinyurl.com/3z6fy )
to download the file. The self-extracting executable is named 2gb152.exe.
Double-click it to unzip it. Run the file Pst2gb.exe, then "Browse" to your .PST
or .OST file. Click Create, then choose a name and location for your "recovered"
file (note that you'll need at least 2 GB of free disk space for the new file).
Choose an amount to cut that will bring the new file significantly under 2 GB.
Microsoft recommends that you start with cutting 25 MB--- if that works, try
again with 15, then 5. The goal, of course, is to end up with a "recovered" file
that is "cropped" as little as possible. After you've created the file, run the
Inbox Repair Tool on it, then rename it to match the filename of the original,
oversized file (the default is Outlook.pst) and replace the old one with the
new.
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