PST File Splitter - When Outlook PST File Exceeds the Size Limit ~ Recover Email

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

PST File Splitter - When Outlook PST File Exceeds the Size Limit

Size of the Microsoft Outlook PST file increases because of incoming and outgoing e-mail messages. Microsoft Outlook has set some size limitation up to which data can be accumulated in it. For example, in earlier versions of Outlook, PST file size limitation was of 2 GB, whereas in the later versions of Outlook, the size limitation was increased, but was set. So, when the size of the Outlook PST file exceeds the set size limitation, it leads to corruption of the PST file. To avoid such corruption related situation, one must remove the old e-mails. But, many times, it happens that your e-mails contain heavy attachments and are useful for you. So, you cannot delete those e-mails. For such situations, it is better to opt for a third-party PST file splitter. With the help of this tool, you can Split PST File into smaller PST files.

To illustrate the above issue, consider a practical case. Suppose, your friend is mailing some important notes that you had missed due to long illness. Since your friend has scanned most of the notes, the mails you have received are very heavy. Due to huge size of the attachments, Outlook PST file quickly exceeds the size limit. And the Outlook PST file gets corrupt. Corrupt Outlook PST file doesn't allow you to access data from it. Every attempt to access data of the mails remains unsuccessful.

Cause:

The root cause for the occurrence of above situation is the increased size of Outlook PST file. Size increases because of receiving bulky attachments.

Resolution:

To resolve the above data loss situation, use below given suggestions. These suggestions will help you find out the messages with large attachments and help you remove them from your mail account:

MS-Outlook 2003 uses a Search folder known as 'Large Mail'. It is used to locate the bulky e-mail attachments. To locate the 'Large Mail' folder:

Point to 'Navigation Pane'.
Expand the 'Search folder' entry named.
Select 'Large Mail' search folder.

If the folder is not available, then create it manually. For this, apply the below mentioned steps:

Select 'File' menu and point to 'New' and select 'Search Folder'.
In 'Select a Search Folder' in the Organizing mail Section, select Large mail.

After performing above steps, you can easily find the mails that contain heavy attachments and are no longer required. Remove them. Always delete the mails from 'Deleted Items' folder, then compact the file. Size of the PST file will remain as it is, if you do not compact it.

You can also opt for third party PST File Splitter tools. These tools split large PST file and make Outlook application manageable. These tools split a huge Outlook PST files into smaller Outlook PST files.