MS Outlook Memory Hog

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Hello,

I save all of my deleted email in the “deleted” folder in Outlook 2007. I do this because I frequently find myself searching for an old email that I need for work. I also do not clean out my “sent” folder either for the same reason. As a result, this has created a huge memory suck. 80% of my used memory on my hard drive is from Outlook deleted or sent files.

I have never taken a MS Outlook course so I dont know what is protocol. So can someone tell me how to manage this problem where I can continue search my deleted and sent files but reduce the amount of memory it takes up.

BTW… I do not have any clue about archiving and have never done that before. Not sure if that is something to try or not.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Rob Caldwell

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I save all of my deleted email in the “deleted” folder in Outlook 2007. I do this because I frequently find myself searching for an old email that I need for work. I also do not clean out my “sent” folder either for the same reason. As a result, this has created a huge memory suck. 80% of my used memory on my hard drive is from Outlook deleted or sent files.

You have to balance performance, storage, convenience, and the value of your time. Most archiving schemes involve culling messages by date or by subject/client and saving them into a separate Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst file). If you only plan to access those messages occasionally, then you probably will improve the day-to-day performance of Outlook by getting them out of your main file. On the other hand, if you access old messages at random, or would have to look in three or four places for a message, then those archiving approaches may not be ideal for you.

What is the total size of your .pst file? Have you tried compressing it (using Outlook’s compression, not Windows compression)?

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You have to balance performance, storage, convenience, and the value of your time. Most archiving schemes involve culling messages by date or by subject/client and saving them into a separate Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst file). If you only plan to access those messages occasionally, then you probably will improve the day-to-day performance of Outlook by getting them out of your main file. On the other hand, if you access old messages at random, or would have to look in three or four places for a message, then those archiving approaches may not be ideal for you.

What is the total size of your .pst file? Have you tried compressing it (using Outlook’s compression, not Windows compression)?

Boy!…. I feel like a real dummy. I don’t have a clue about compression or how to find the size of a .pst file…. I have over 12,000 messages in my deleted file and over 3,000 in my sent folder. It’s HUGE! Just would like to get some instructions on how to reduce that and still have access to those from time to time.

Thanks,

Rob Caldwell

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I don’t have a clue about compression or how to find the size of a .pst file….

Do you display the “Navigation Pane” (you can open it from the View menu)? If you right-click the top-level container, often labeled Personal Folders, and choose “Properties for [Personal Folders]”, you get two very useful buttons: Folder Size… and Advanced… Folder size shows you the total size of your file, and Advanced shows you the path on disk and also has a Compact Now button you can use to squeeze out excess space. If you never delete any mail, you might not have any excess space, but assuming you make regular backups, there’s no harm in giving it a try.

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Boy!…. I feel like a real dummy. I don’t have a clue about compression or how to find the size of a .pst file…. I have over 12,000 messages in my deleted file and over 3,000 in my sent folder. It’s HUGE! Just would like to get some instructions on how to reduce that and still have access to those from time to time.

Thanks,

Rob Caldwell

Rob: I too sometimes feel like a real dummy. Something jscher2000 said prompted me to do a search as I too have problems like yours.
This is what I found Outlook How to. I am using Outlook 2007 but help for 2003 is also available. Sure opened my eyes about .pst and managing the mail box. Plan to run through all of the lessons myself. Maybe I too will learn how to deal with the masses of e-mails that come in here.
Cheers
Joan

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I save all of my deleted email in the “deleted” folder in Outlook 2007. I do this because I frequently find myself searching for an old email that I need for work. I also do not clean out my “sent” folder either for the same reason. 80% of my used memory on my hard drive is from Outlook deleted or sent files.

Rob, are you an an Exchange server, and have you kept your messages in your Mailbox Sent Items and Deleted items folders, so that you are being advised by IT that you are using too much server space? It would be quite a feat to exhaust 80% of the space on a hard drive with message files, so I’m guessing this is what is happening. The Mailbox is actually space on the Exchange server, and it’s common that server side space is limited.

Since you have not taken any courses, I’m asking some basic questions, dependent on your answer(s) to the first question. If you already know this stuff, don’t take offense.

Have you created a separate PST on your hard drive to store messages? Most users do this to save messages, and they create folders within the PST to store messages in by related issues, such as projects, or companies you sell or buy from, or correspondents. If you have not done so, here are instructions for setting up a PST: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP012319871033.aspx

Once you have PST running, you can move your sent messages to the various folders you set up, and you can also keep messages in those folders that you now routinely delete. You can search the PST for names and words. The PST will open along with your Server Inbox when you start Outlook, and it acts as your local infobase for all your messages. That is how most Outlook users manage their message files.

Is this making sense?

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Rob, are you an an Exchange server, and have you kept your messages in your Mailbox Sent Items and Deleted items folders, so that you are being advised by IT that you are using too much server space? It would be quite a feat to exhaust 80% of the space on a hard drive with message files, so I’m guessing this is what is happening. The Mailbox is actually space on the Exchange server, and it’s common that server side space is limited.

Since you have not taken any courses, I’m asking some basic questions, dependent on your answer(s) to the first question. If you already know this stuff, don’t take offense.

Have you created a separate PST on your hard drive to store messages? Most users do this to save messages, and they create folders within the PST to store messages in by related issues, such as projects, or companies you sell or buy from, or correspondents. If you have not done so, here are instructions for setting up a PST: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP012319871033.aspx

Once you have PST running, you can move your sent messages to the various folders you set up, and you can also keep messages in those folders that you now routinely delete. You can search the PST for names and words. The PST will open along with your Server Inbox when you start Outlook, and it acts as your local infobase for all your messages. That is how most Outlook users manage their message files.

Is this making sense?

Hello. Well there is no exchange server or IT people. Just my little old laptop running by itself.

I will look into the “PST” scenario.

Thanks,

Rob Caldwell

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no exchange server or IT people. Just my little old laptop running by itself.

And you use a service like GMail or Hotmail or Yahoo mail or some regional ISP with mail service?

My mind is still boggled by your statement that your PST is taking 80% of your hard drive space. A 5 GB PST would be very large, it would cause Outlook to be very slow on startup; what is the size of your hard drive? In addition to compressing your PST as jscher2000 suggests, you might want to look for emails with large attachments, save the attachments to disk, and remove them from the message. You won’t immediately gain space, but background PST compression will eventually reduce the file size.

You should probably start archiving old messages into an archive folder and move those archives off your laptop hard drive. For information on archiving see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830119
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011216101033.aspx (applies to Outlook 2003 but the principles are the same)
That way old messages are available if you want to find them.

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prior to Outlook 2003 SP2 or 3, the hard limit for PST files was 2GB, if you went over it (which you can do briefly) it would cost you some messages and involve a lengthy repair process to get back the PST file. On later versions of Outlook, you can go higher than 2GB, but i still advise my users to keep them under 2GB, and frequently burn them to DVD as backup incase of system/drive failure or loss of laptop if travelling.

By default your PST files are stored in c:Dos & SettingsLocal SettingsApps DataMSOutlook

i would enable auto-archive (Tools, Option, Other) to run every 14 days, and archive (make sure delete is NOT selected) messages older then 3 months, which will move most of the Sent Items messages down to the Archive.PST file on your laptop. Now for your other issue, is this a disk space issue, or RAM used to run the application, Task Manager will be able to show you (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) how much resources it uses in memory, look under processes, click the Image Name column to sort in to A-Z, and then look for Outlook.exe and drop the last 3 digits to get the MB of memory in use. Go tot he file path listed above if you wish to see the size of your PST files. You can create more to file your emails more efficiently, and this is done via the ToolsOptionsMail Setup tab and Data Files button mid-right of the window.

There is no getting away from it, if you have a lot of mail, even after you try and compress the PST’s, you will still need a fair amount of disk space to store them. You will also need the XP Search 4.0 upgrade patch (KB940157) to be able to search for emails in Outlook 2007 properly.

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