IT for Charities & NFPs

A large number of the support calls we receive relate to problems with over-sized Outlook personal folders – which if left unfixed can lead to major problems using Outlook and loss of stored messages.

Logging in to your Outlook to be either confronted with warning messages or, worse still, corrupted data files or missing emails, is something that can strike terror into anyone.

In this post we look at the single most important check you can make to help avoid this happening  to you – and (in our next post) what to do if the warnings are already there.  It is based on Microsoft Outlook, but a lot of the information holds true for other email clients too – though the ways of doing things will of course we different.

Also, the information below applies only if you download your email messages into local files rather than keeping them all on the mail server.  If you don’t know which applies in your case, then please ask whoever deals with your IT internally.  Or us!

First of all, let’s identify the number one cause of these problems – and how to check if you might be affected.

Outlook can only cope with Data Files (Personal Folders and Archive files) up to a certain size.
…. if they are bigger, then it is a case of when (not if) disaster will occur

• If the files have been created in the newer format (not 97-2002 compatible) using the most recent version of Outlook (2007) or the most recent Service Packed version of Outlook 2003 (SP3 or above) then you can have files up to 20GB
• If any of the files were created in an earlier version, even if you are using the most recent version now, the absolute maximum size of any file is 2GB.  In practice any file over 1.8GB is highly likely to cause problems soon (if it hasn’t already) so you should take steps now to reduce it.

If you are not 100% sure which version of Outlook you have, then the easiest way to find out is to click on Help -> About Microsoft Outlook.  The window that pops up will tell you the version (and Service Pack) you are running.

But unless you have only recently created your Outlook profile and files from scratch, there is a fair chance that you may be working with files created with the older restrictions – so unless you are 100% sure, stick to the 1.8GB limit.

To find out what size your Outlook data files are:

• Look at the file size by browsing to the area(s) where they are stored in My Computer

or

• Right-Click on the top level of the folder in the left-hand Outlook pane
  Choose Properties
  Click on the Folder Size button and wait for your machine to count up the total

If you are not used to checking computer file sizes, the number of digits can get a bit confusing – let alone working out how many KB or MB in a GB!

Normally the results are displayed in KB.  If your file size is less than 1 800 000 KB (add another 0 to this if you are sure you are using files created in the latest version) then you should be ok for now.  But if it is close to or more than that, you need to take action immediately if you are to avoid huge problems later.

And remember, if you have more than one data file (including archive files) you will need to check each one separately.

And if any of your files are to big, what do you do next?

First of all make sure that you have deleted anything in your Deleted Items folder – unless your Outlook is set up to do this automatically on exit (which by default it isn’t) then there may be hundreds of files in there.

But there are other more long-term ways of re-arranging how your email files are stored to keep the folder sizes down.  We will cover some of the most common options next time.

Any comments or queries … or suggestions for follow up topics that you would like us to cover? Just leave a comment or contact us (details on the About Us page) and we will do our best to help.