MS Outlook stores all user data (email messages, contacts, calendars, tasks, etc.) in Personal folders (PST) file. MS Outlook 2002 and prior versions confine the size of PST file to an upper limit of 2 GB. However, Outlook 2003 and later support the Unicode format that extends this size limit to 20 GB, with Outlook 2010 supporting 50 GB.

 

If the PST file approaches this upper limit, you may experience some peculiar Outlook behavior. You may fail to perform typical Outlook operations, such as sending or receiving an email, accessing different folders, moving an item to another folder, etc. In the worst cases, you might face an Outlook crash.

 

One of the primary error message that appears on your screen indicating that the PST file has reached its upper size limit is shown below:

 

“File has reached its maximum size”

 

In due course of time, your oversized PST file may get corrupt. In order to effectively overcome these problems, you need to split your large Outlook PST file into various smaller-sized PST files. These files will be independent of each other and can be accessed separately in MS Outlook.

 

Microsoft provides the 'Pst2gb.exe' program that truncates an user-specified amount of data in the PST File. Sometimes, this oversized PST crop tool fails to work and creates a truncated copy of your PST File. In these situations, use Stellar Phoenix PST File Splitter to crop efficiently or split a large PST file into smaller and manageable parts.

 

Stellar Phoenix PST File Splitter provides you a reliable method to easily split any large sized PST file into smaller individual PST files based on different criteria, such as date, size, mail ID etc. The phenomenal tool can split single as well as multiple PST files simultaneously. Moreover, an user can automate the PST file split operation by creating a batch file with '.txt' extension. In order to effectively split your oversized PST file into smaller PST files using Stellar Phoenix PST File Splitter, follow the series of steps given below:

 

• The main interface of Stellar Phoenix PST File Splitter is shown below. It provides you two options: 'Split Single File' and 'Multiple Files'.
  
  

 

Splitting Single PST file

 

• Click 'Split Single File' to split one PST file at a time. Now, click 'Select PST File' to choose the source PST File. By default, the software saves all resultant PST files at the original location of the source file. You can choose a different destination to save the newly created PST files using the 'Change Destination' option. Click 'Split PST File' to begin the PST file split operation.
  
  
• The next screen shows different splitting criteria, i.e. 'Date', 'Mail Id', 'Size', 'Select and Split'. If you select 'By Date' option, you need to specify a preferred time duration to extract emails and other items falling within that period under 'Option Description'.
  
  
• If you select 'By Size' option, you have to provide a desired size for each PST slice to be created from the larger PST. You can specify this size in 'Option Description' below the 'Select Splitting option' section.
  
  
• Select 'By Mail Id' and click 'OK' to start scanning the source PST file. After the scan is completed, a list of all mail ids in the file will be displayed. Now, select the desired mail ids on the basis of which the software will split the PST file. The software will scan the file and extract all emails having similar mail ids in the 'From', 'To', Cc, or 'Bcc' fields.
  
  
• Choose 'Select and Split' and click 'OK' for extracting individual folders in the source PST file. The next screen will display a list of all folders present in the file. Select the desired folders to be used as the split criteria and then click 'OK'.
  
  

 

Splitting Multiple PST Files

 

• On the main screen, click 'Split Multiple Files' to split two or more PST Files simultaneously. The next screen contains two options: 'Split By Time' and 'Split By Size'.
  
  
• Select 'Split By Time' to split the PST file based on 'time' criteria. You can select a folder containing PST Files, multiple PST files at different locations, or a previously created batch file.
  
  
• Click 'Select Files' to split PST Files stored at different locations. On the next screen, you can select multiple PST files, provide a 'Start Date' and 'End Date' to each file, and then add all these files to a list. You must also select a destination path to save the small-sized PSTs for each PST file in the list.
  
  
• If you select 'Split By Size', you need to specify the file size for a PST slice corresponding to each PST file added to the list as shown below. After completion of the process, a new folder for each PST file will be created at the destination specified.
  
  

 

Stellar Phoenix PST Splitter is one simple and effective tool using which you can split a growing PST into small Outlook usable PSTs for later reference. Download the Free Demo of the software to see its features and functionalities.