From: "Glenn Meadows" 

Have you tried the Inbox Repair tool?

Program Files/Common Files/System/MAPI/SCANPST.EXE.

Run that first.  Then see if Outlook can open it, and immediately delete
stuff from your Sent and Deleted folder, without retrieving any email.

Then do an ARCHIVE to move mail to an archive PST.

When that's done, then right click on the root folder of the PST file, and
select Properties, then Advanced, and click COMPRESS NOW.

Be prepared to go out for a long dinner, as it takes a long time to
compress the file.

Turn ON Auto Archiving, and set it to some reasonable time frame.

There is no limit as to the number of OPEN Archive PST files you can have,
but if you're on Office 2000 or XP, then you are stuck with the 2 GIG
limit.

Only Office 2003 gives you the option of a larger PST.

Opening an existing 97-2002 style PST in Office 2003 does NOT change the
limitations on that file.  To migrate to a new larger size PST, you have to
create a NEW PST, in the 2003 format, then IMPORT all the info from the old
one to the new one, then you get the greatly expanded size.

I've had to deal with this at least once every couple of weeks.

Best cure I've given people, is Auto Archive, and once every 2-3 months,
create a new archive folder, and change their names to display the time
period they cover.

PST's are like 4 drawer filing cabinets, when they're full, you can't cram
another piece of paper in them.  Then, you go to Office Depot, and buy an
empty file cabinet, and move stuff you don't need as often into the new
cabinet. .

As to why it won't tell you it's about to "break", I think that's
on Office 2000 issue.  We have a collection of versions going, and the 2000
ones seem to give the least amount of warning.  In Office XP (2002), the
warning seems to be mail won't download, outbound email gets stuck in the
out box, because it can't be moved to the sent folder, so it gets sent over
and over again. In that situation, a quick dump of the Deleted Items
folder, and a purge of the Sent folder (use Shift-Delete to dump without
going thru Deleted Items) give a short reprieve until a real cleanup can be
done.

Hope that helps.

--

Glenn M.
"Tim Boyer"  wrote in message
news:ne3jn2pusos2ui9u8aistu0f9803e8ahkp{at}4ax.com...
> I've run into the (in)famous .pst file larger than 2 gig problem, and
> cannot
> open my Outlook file.  There used to be tools and articles up on the
> Microsoft
> site, such as the PS2GB utility.  Somehow, they've all disappeared.
>
> Anyone know where I can find something to fix this?  And how the hell does
> a
> piece of software not check for this _before_ becoming too large to
> handle?
>
> --
> tim boyer
> tim{at}denmantire.com

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