MS Outlook is one of the most popular email client applications designed by Microsoft, which not only helps you in emailing (sending and receiving emails) but also provides you a unique feature of management. Besides being an email application, it includes others features as well, such as: calendaring, task managing, contact managing, note taking, journal and web browsing. MS Outlook uses a database file to store all the mailbox data, which is known as Personal Storage Table having PST extension. The Outlook PST file is stored on the hard drive of your local system. With time, as the number of mailbox data received in Outlook mailbox, the size of your PST file also increases. And after a point of time, you may come to know that your PST file is becoming oversized.
The size limitation issue is one of the most critical drawbacks in Outlook PST files. In the earlier versions of MS Outlook, ANSI format is used for PST files. ANSI format has a size limitation of 2 GB, which means it cannot store data up to 2 GB. On the other hand, the later versions of Outlook (such as: 2003, 2007, 2010 & 2013) uses Unicode format for PST files. A Unicode PST file can easily store data up to 20 GB. Whenever an Outlook PST file of any format, i.e. ANSI or Unicode, crosses its predefined size limit, it becomes prone to corruption. If the files are large in size, it will cause weak performance of MS Outlook as well as lose the speed if files get bigger in size.
Also Read: How to Convert Microsoft Outlook Non-Unicode (ANSI) PST file to a Unicode PST Format ?
How to Convert an Outlook PST File into CSV File Format ?
It must be a challenging task for an Outlook user to optimize the performance of Outlook and avoid PST corruption and data loss. In such situations, you can use some efficient techniques to clean the PST files. The techniques are given below:
- By deleting unused space: This is one of most common and easiest ways to keep the PST files small in size by deleting unused items from Outlook mailbox folder. Other than this, you can also empty the “Deleted Items” folder on regular basis, but if possible. Otherwise do not.
- By archiving old items: If you have some old mailbox data which is very crucial that you cannot remove them, but keeping them in the PST file makes the file large in size. But if you archive them, the size of the PST file can be reduced. So it is suggested to keep all the old mailbox data in an archived manner.
- By splitting large PST file: There is no limitation for PST files in quantity wise, i.e. your Outlook can handle more than one PST files. Thus instead of having a large PST file, you can have more than one PST files of smaller size. By splitting a large PST file, you will get a number of small sized PST files.
- By using Outlook’s “Compact Now” feature: There is a built-in feature in MS Outlook that helps you compact the large sized PST files. You can easily compact the file manually by using this feature.
- Launch MS Outlook.
- Click File tab > Account Settings > again click on Account Settings.
- “Account Settings” window will be appeared. Click Data Files tab.
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Select the Outlook data file that you want to compact and click on Settings.
- “Outlook Data File” window will be opened. Click Compact Now.
How to Use SysInfoTools PST Compress & Compact Software to Compress PST File Size ?
These are some few manual techniques which can help you handle your large-sized PST files without causing any data loss. Though all these techniques are very safe-to-use, however you should take backup of your PST files before using any of them.
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