PST not shrinking (SR1)

[sketchyrob]

Morning Folks, I've had a few pst files on various client machine that have been getting near to the dreaded 2gb mark due to poor housekeeping by the user. As a result I have been getting them to use WNMailkeeper to archive all the mails to another drive. Once done, they have been manually deleting the folders and files from outlook completely, but the .pst still says that it is hovering close to 2gb, even though a least a 1gb of mails have been deleted. Any idea's?

[Leif]

Have you tried compacting them?

(Tools > Services > Personal Folders > Properties > Compact Now)

[sketchyrob]

Too easy really. Maybe I should reconsider being a techie! <img src=/S/smile.gif border=0 alt=smile width=15 height=15>
Cheers

[d_rasley]

If only Microsoft could add a "compact on close" setting for Outlook like they have for Access databases. It may make closing Outlook take a little longer - especially if the PST's are getting so enormous - but routine maintenance items like that should either be completely automated or completely obvious.

Do any of the VBA gurus have some thoughts on how this might be able to be set up?

[Leif]

Not a guru, but I always thought it did self-compact in the background.
Normally it would not have to cope with such a large deletion and would have taken some time to shrink - I would guess that manual compacting from 2GB to 1GB was not a quick matter.

[MaryJ]

yes, it does compact in the backgroud automatically, during idle time. This means users need to leave outlook open most of the day. too many open it to read mail then close it until they decide to check mail again.

on a large mailbox, it might require 15-30 min of idle time (outlook is in the background, cpu needs a light load, which is most of the time except when number crunching or other cpu intensive tasks)

[d_rasley]

Idle time? What qualifies as 'idle'? I open Outlook when I get to the office and close it when I leave, but while it is open it is checking for new mail every 5 minutes. Do these periodic checks, even if there is no new mail, interrupt the 'idle' that Outlook needs to compact its folders? Do you have any ideas on how a continuous corporate network connection might affect 'idle' as well? (Norton used to report my CPU running at 100% at all times, even if no application was running.)

[MaryJ]

i believe it's about 10 min of inactivity. i'm not sure if mail checks count, but for optimal network load, you shouldn't check mail more often than about every 8-10 min. i use an exchange maiklbox and when i've added a pst for testing and cleaned it out, it was compacted inthe background, even as the server sent me mail. the pst wasn't the delivery location though.

a continous connection won't affect it, or shouldn't, as long as the cpu isn't running at full speed all the time.

[d_rasley]

<hr>a continous connection won't affect it, or shouldn't, as long as the cpu isn't running at full speed all the time.<hr>

How about if System Monitor | Kernel: Processor Usage (%) shows nothing but 100% usage at all times? Mostly just curious though. At the office I manually archive and compact all my folders before doing my backups, whereas at home the Processor Usage reports more normal activity with lots of idle time for Outlook to do its thing automatically.

[MaryJ]

then the system is not idle. <img src=/S/smile.gif border=0 alt=smile width=15 height=15> i'm not sure how low is considered idle to outlook, but even now, when typing, i'm not much over a few percents except for a spike here and there.

are you doing things that you would expect it be using 100% cpu? if not, i think the bigger issue is why is it at 100% all the time.

[d_rasley]

A quick little check, and it is my network overhead that is keeping the CPU registering 100%. Restarted without any of the network programs loading and 'idle' was around 50% CPU usage - and the computer was a lot more responsive than usual as well. Unfortunately there's no way around it... But it also tells me that the System Monitor is not reporting the 100% use in error, and that I shouldn't expect Outlook to do any compacting on its own without prompting first.