How long does compacting outlook take

Blog author is a reputed system administrator in a big IT organization. Ask him the query when you stuck in critical issue. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Also, Outlook may slow down or freeze due to large PST size. Leave a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. An oversized PST file can cause serious troubles for Outlook users. It not only causes Outlook performance issues but also mailbox corruption which may lead to data loss situation.

May 28, by Rachel Email Management , Outlook. And sometimes it may happen that you need to buy an additional hard disk to store a large number of PST files. An oversized PST file can cause serious performance issues in the Outlook client.

And the worst impact is corruption which may happen when a PST file reaches or crosses the maximum size limit. In such a situation, you must repair PST file to save your crucial mailbox from being lost. When you try to open or load an oversized PST file, you may encounter an error message like: xxxx.

Errors have been detected in the file xxxx. Quit all mail-enabled applications, and then use the Inbox Repair Tool. The file could not be added to the folder. The action could not be completed. How to handle an oversized PST file? Follow these simple steps: First, launch Microsoft Outlook on your computer. Click the Cleanup Tools tab next to Mailbox Cleanup.

Select M ailbox Cleanup… in the options. When deleting the unwanted items from each folder, it moves them to the Deleted Items folder, which is present in the same file.

To permanently delete Must delete the items from Deleted Items folder to permanently delete them so that Outlook can compact the file. Does not remove all the free spaces during compacting process.

For compacting OST file outlook , , , , it must meet the requirements:. The following steps help to compact an OST file:. A screen appears which shows you different folders and their sizes.

Pst-files and ost-file are the databases which Outlook uses for storage. Whether a pst-file or ost-file is being used depends on your mail account type and your version of Outlook. Instead, it will only do this when a certain threshold is reached.

As said, when a pst-file or ost-file would grow and shrink with every action you take in Outlook, it would have a negative effect on performance. Of course you want to directly see the results of your cleanup action and not wait for Outlook to finally shrink the file for you. Where you can find the Compact Now command for your pst-file or ost-file depends on the mail account type and version of Outlook that you use.