Managing Outlook Data Files
Outlook stores all information in a flat-file database—a simple list. In Outlook parlance, each record is an item, and the type of item—e-mail message, contact, appointment, and so on—defines which fields are available for entering and displaying information. Each of Outlook's default folders displays items of a single type, and you can create new folders as well.
Choosing Where Outlook Stores Your Data
When new mail arrives, or when you create and save a new item in one of Outlook's default folders (Contacts, for example), Outlook adds the new item to the location specified as the primary store. That location might be a local file, or it could be a set of folders on a Microsoft Exchange Server. The exact location depends on how you (and, in some cases, your network administrator) have configured Outlook. In most of the examples in this book, we assume that your primary store is a Personal Folders file (with a .pst extension) stored on your local PC.
Personal Folders Files
A Personal Folders file is the basic storage format for a single user's data. These files use the extension .pst. When you configure Outlook 2002 for use with one or more Internet-standard e-mail accounts (no Exchange servers), Outlook creates a single Personal Folders file called Outlook.pst and stores it in the Outlook data files location. This file holds all Outlook data—messages, attachments, the Contacts and Calendar folder…the works.
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Where are your Outlook data files and settings stored? The exact location depends on your operating system and whether you've upgraded from a previous version. For a remarkably complete listing of these locations, open the Help system and search for the topic "Outlook file locations." Even easier: Open Outlook, choose File, Data File Management, and view all current settings in a convenient dialog box.
In this configuration, the Personal Folders file is the primary store: New messages are delivered to the Inbox in that file, and all other default Outlook folders are stored there as well. If you connect to an Exchange Server, a Personal Folders file is optional. Regardless of your e-mail configuration, however, the file format is identical.
Typically, Personal Folders files are stored on a user's local hard drive, although it is possible to store a file on a network server. You can also create multiple Personal Folders files and access them at the same time. In this configuration, the additional Personal Folders files are defined as secondary stores. Outlook does not save new items directly in these files, but you can move items into a secondary store by dragging and dropping them from your primary store, or you can define rules that automatically move incoming messages into the secondary store based on their content.
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Outlook's default settings bury data files in odd locations that aren't easy to back up. If you administer your own computer and regularly back up the entire folder that con tains all your user documents and settings, you're OK. For home and small business users who administer their own computers, we recommend moving data files to their own subfolder in the My Documents folder. Create a folder called My Mail, for instance, and move the PST and/or OST files there so that they're properly backed up with the rest of your data. Note that you must close Outlook before moving data files. After moving the file, reopen Outlook and choose File, Data File Management; use the dialog box to open the data file.
Although there are limits on the size of a Personal Folders file, in practice, most users won't ever come close to hitting the maximum size. A Personal Folders file can be up to 2GB in size and can contain up to 16,384 folders, with each folder containing a maximum of 16,384 subfolders. If your Personal Folders file reaches even a few hundred megabytes, you should seriously consider breaking it into multiple files for ease of management. This is especially important with archive files, which can grow to unmanageable sizes over time if they contain many large file attachments.
To create a new Personal Folders file, choose File, New, Outlook Data File. Choose Personal Folders File (.pst) from the dialog box. Give the file a name, choose a location, and click OK. You'll see the dialog box shown in Figure 9.9, which allows you to define the name that appears in Outlook's Folders List and set compression and encryption options.
Figure 9.9. Outlook uses the name you enter here to identify the top-level folder for a Personal Folders file.
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There's no relationship at all between the name of the Personal Folders data file and the text label that appears in the Folders List. If you create a second file that you intend to use for messages from mailing lists, for example, you might choose to use a filename such as Lists.pst, and then change the top-level folder name to My Mailing Lists.
After creating the additional Personal Folders file, Outlook automatically opens it. To close the file, right-click its icon in the Outlook Bar or the Folder List. You can also use this shortcut menu to adjust the properties of any Personal Folders file.
Offline Store Files
If you connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server, you can create one (and only one) Offline Store file and store it on your computer. This file type, which uses the extension .ost, closely resembles a Personal Folders file.
Items in an Offline Store file can be synchronized with your Mailbox folder on a Microsoft Exchange Server. As the name implies, Outlook compares the items on the server with those in your Offline Store file and adds, updates, or deletes items in both places so they always contain the same information. This enables you to read and compose e-mail or other items when the server is unavailable—for example, when you're reading mail from a home PC or from a notebook computer on the road. When you connect to the server via remote access, or when you return to the office and reconnect your notebook computer to the network, click the Send/Receive button to transfer changes in both directions. Follow these instructions to set up offline access:
Choose Tools, E-Mail Accounts.
Choose the View or Change Existing E-Mail Accounts option and click Next.
From the list of e-mail accounts, choose Microsoft Exchange Server and click the Change button.
In the dialog box that lists your server and usernames, click the More Settings button.
On the Advanced tab of the Microsoft Exchange Server dialog box (see Figure 9.10), click the Offline Folder File Settings button.
Figure 9.10.
In the File box (see Figure 9.11), enter the complete path to the file you want to use as the Offline Folder file. Use the Browse button to select a location other than the default data files folder.
Figure 9.11.
The default filename is Outlook.ost; however, you can give this file any name.
Click OK to save your changes.
When you set up an Offline Folders file, items remain in your local file and messages you compose remain in your Outbox until you click the Send/Receive button and synchronize the folders.
You control exactly which items are available in which folders when you synchronize with the Exchange Server, using any of the following techniques:
To control whether a particular folder is synchronized with an Exchange Server, select the folder and choose Tools, Send/Receive Settings, Make This Folder Available Offline. This menu choice is a toggle; a check mark means it's on.
To filter items in a folder so only some of them are synchronized, right-click that folder's Offline Store icon and choose Properties. Click the Filter button on the Synchronization tab to change settings. For instance, you might want to synchronize only messages that are less than 30 days old to avoid clutter.
To work directly with the server files and bypass the Offline Store file temporarily, click the Disable Offline Use button in the Offline Folder Settings dialog box (shown previously in Figure 9.11).
When your primary store is an Offline Store file, you can still create and use any number of Personal Folders files. All such files will be secondary stores. You might choose this strategy if you want to save network space or reduce synchronization time by archiving messages to a local file for ready access.
Mailbox Folders on an Exchange Server Only
If you use Outlook to connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server, you can access mail and create calendar and contact items in your Mailbox folders on the server. If you lose the network connection, you lose all access to your data. This option is typically found in highly managed corporations where administrators are concerned about security and/or local storage space on users'computers.
Deleting and Archiving Outlook Information
By default, Outlook automatically moves items out of your Personal Folders file after a specified amount of time has passed. Using this AutoArchive feature, Outlook checks every item in your Personal Folders file at intervals. When it finds appointments, tasks, and e-mail messages that exceed the age limits you specify (by default, it looks for any items that are more than six months old), it automatically moves them to an archive file. You can also force Outlook to archive items instead of waiting for its next scheduled archive operation.
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Cleaning up and archiving mail folders is easier if junk mail and other nonessential messages never get there in the first place. Use Outlook's Rules Wizard to delete specific types of messages and move other types directly into folders as they arrive. The folders you specify as the destination in each rule can be in a different Personal Folders file; if you use rules to move messages into different folders in your primary Outlook data file, you can specify custom AutoArchive options for those folders.
Configuring AutoArchive options in Outlook 2002 is a much simpler process than in previous versions. From a single dialog box, you tell Outlook how often you want it to scan your Personal Folders file (or files) and perform AutoArchive options. Then, optionally, you can set different archiving options for individual folders.
By default, Outlook performs an AutoArchive operation every two weeks. To adjust Auto Archive options, choose Tools, Options, click the Other tab, and click the AutoArchive button. This action displays the dialog box shown in Figure 9.12.
Figure 9.12. By default, Outlook scans all Personal Folders files every 14 days. Click the Apply These Settings to All Folders Now button to change settings for all folders.
Use any or all of these AutoArchive settings:
To enable the AutoArchive option, make sure a check mark appears in the Run AutoArchive Every n Days box.
To adjust the AutoArchive interval from its default of 14 days, pick a new number between 1 and 60 here. Choose a smaller number if you want Outlook to aggressively manage your data.
If you want the AutoArchive operation to occur unattended, clear the check mark from the Prompt Before AutoArchive Runs box.
Specify a filename and location in the Move Old Items To box. Unless you change this setting, Outlook creates a new Personal Folders file called Archive.pst and stores it in the default Outlook data files location, along with your main Outlook data file.
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By definition, the archive file includes data you don't need every day, so it doesn't make sense to keep this file open. If you want to search for an item in this file, choose File, Open, Personal Folders File (.pst), and select the Archive.pst file. Then use the folder list to display the contents of individual folders in the archive file.
Each time Outlook runs its AutoArchive check, it performs operations on each folder separately, using the default settings. To adjust AutoArchive options for an individual folder, right-click its icon in the Outlook Bar or in the folders list, and then choose Properties. The AutoArchive tab of the Properties dialog box (see Figure 9.13) lets you enable or disable archiving for that folder. This dialog box also lets you specify a location where you want Outlook to move items (the default is the file you specified in the global AutoArchive options), or you can choose to delete all items that are older than the specified time.
Figure 9.13. The Properties dialog box lets you set different AutoArchive options for each folder.
Note
Because items in the Contacts folder do not have a date associated with them, there is no AutoArchive tab in this folder's Properties dialog box, and AutoArchive operations do not affect this folder.
In many cases, you'll want to radically adjust these default settings. For example, if you never refer to your Calendar folder to look up old meetings and appointments, you can safely specify that you want to delete these items when AutoArchiving. On the other hand, if you live and die by e-mail, you might want every message you send and receive in the same file so you can search for information easily. In that case, right-click the Inbox folder, choose Properties, and remove the check mark from the Clean Out Items option.
Recovering Free Space in Outlook Data Files
Deleting items from your Outlook data files is only a first step. When you toss the items, Outlook doesn't automatically recover the space the deleted items used. (Old database developers are familiar with the syndrome, in which the database file continues to reserve space long after the data is gone.) In fact, even after you delete every single item from a 200MB Personal Folders (.pst) file, that file continues to occupy the full 200MB. To squeeze this wasted space out of your files, you need to compact the files manually, using the following steps:
In the Outlook Data Files dialog box, select the file you want to compact and click the Settings button to open the Personal Folders dialog box shown in Figure 9.14.
Figure 9.14.
Click the Compact Now button. Depending on the size of the file and your available system resources, this action might take some time.
Click OK to close the Personal Folders dialog box.
Repairing a Damaged Personal Folders File
If you begin encountering error messages or suspect that a Personal Folders file is damaged, a well-hidden Outlook tool can help you set things right in short order. Search your hard drive for a file called Scanpst.exe. As the name implies, this utility can scan a Personal Folders file, report any damage it finds, and repair the errors with your permission. Double-click the file and follow the wizard's prompts; note that this process might take several hours on a large PST file, so be prepared to wait. (Another utility, Scanost.exe, works with Offline Folder files.)
Caution
Personal Folders files are remarkably resilient, but not indestructible. If you keep irreplaceable information such as important e-mail or contact information in one of these files, back it up regularly—preferably to a tape or server stored in a different physical location. You must shut down Outlook before you can copy a Personal Folders file.