Why compacting PST file is beneficial for Outlook users

Communicating via emails is a daily task for a MS Outlook user. For uninterrupted sending, receiving and management of Outlook data it is necessary to ensure that all its data files are safe. One of the most important file of MS Outlook that is Personal Storage Table (PST) is responsible for maintaining all the emails, contacts, attachments, tasks, notes and calendar entries and more. So you cannot ignore the importance and its related issues PST file.

The reason why it is becomes required to manage a PST file is the size of this file. With continuous incoming and outgoing of emails, the size of Outlook PST file gradually increases over a period of time. Eventually, the problems like Outlook hang and not responding starts occurring which degrades the performance of Outlook.

A big PST file causes the performance issues as well as if the size crosses its maximum limit then it can also damage the file and one could loss entire data. To overcome this trouble, some precautionary measures should be taken which are as follows:

Keep a check of PST file size: Always check the size of PST file as at any moment you can reach to the maximum size limit. For ANSI format based versions (upto 2002) check that the file size should be less than 2 GB and for Unicode format based (2003, 2007 it is 20 GB and for 2010 it is 50 GB).

You can maintain the size of PST file by deleting unnecessary emails and other data, archiving the file, creating a new file or by compact PST file to reduce Outlook file size either with manual method or automatically with a tool or software.

Compacting large PST File:

To shrink a PST file and to optimize the free space of PST file, use the “Compact Now” method. Just right click on PST file, go to Properties, and click on compact now. This will optimize the free space and thus reduces the size of oversized PST file.

However, in case of latest versions like Outlook 2010, 2007 and 2003, sometimes manual compaction does not work. It does not create much free space. For such scenario, Compact PST Software works in a stipulated manner and reduces the size of PST file up to a great extent. This software checks for large attachments and extracts such attachments into a separate folder. These folders later can be accessed through interlinking in the corresponding message.

With compaction method, a user can maintain and enhance the performance of MS Outlook. All the operations and data will be accessible with quite ease and comfort without any data loss.