How to Improve Outlook Performance without any hassle?

MS-Outlook user mostly thinks that following reasons are responsible for the sluggish behavior of MS-Outlook:

Cause for Outlook sluggish behavior

• Power failure
• Virus attack
• Improper shutdown of system
• Outlook upgrade hangs up

But it is not true, most of us are uninformed of fact that the main reason behind the slothful behavior of Outlook is over grown size of PST file. This overgrown size results in slow performance of Outlook and also affects PST file performance. In this case, user will have no longer access to its PST file as it suspect to corruption and user has to lose its all valuable data.

Root cause for overgrown size of mailbox:

In previous version of Outlook (2000&2002), followed file format is ANSI which provides user to store only 2 GB data. When file size exceeds to 2 GB then Outlook application will no longer work smoothly. This causes too much problem while sending and receiving emails.

This problem is known as 2GB file size problem. Overgrown size of PST file will drive user in danger zone by corrupting the PST file. To deal with this problem, Outlook starts supporting for UNICODE file format in newer versions (2003 and above). This allows user to save data up to 20 GB only. One more reason behind the overgrown size of PST file is heavy attachments. To deal with such problem, user can separate out the heavy file attachments and can save them in a different file folder for future use.

Common Problems with oversized PST file:

• MS-Outlook decline to start
• MS-Outlook takes too much time in loading.
• Problems in adding or deleting the files from the folder
• Application causes problem while sending and receiving emails
• Application freezes automatically after sometime
• Loss of valuable data

All above issues are quite enough to explain that what issues a user can face due to oversized PST file. So, to avoid such nasty situations it is advised to decrease the size of large PST files.

Troubleshoot the Over sized PST file problem:

To make space on hard disk, a normal user will eliminate the unwanted emails from their mail box or will delete the all emails present in the deleted items folder. But they are unaware of fact that this will not do any effect on PST file. Best way to sort out this dilemma is compression of PST file. To compress PST file use 'Compact Now' option.

Microsoft provides inbuilt options to compact the PST file. User can easily adopt that option by clicking on “Compact Now” menu present in the user’s profile associated with Outlook. PST file compression can be performing in two ways i.e.

• Manual PST Compression
• Automated Background Compression

Location of Compact now option in Manual PST Compression:

• Point to Menu select the option Data File Management
• By selecting the desired PST file hit on settings
• Select the button Compact Now

User can choose methods according to their preference but these two methods do not provide any assurance of no data loss while compressing. To overcome with this problem, user can use third party tools to compress the large size PST file.

Key Benefits of using third party tools

• Let user compress both files i.e. OST and PST
• User will get complete assurance of no data loss
• Let user save attachments in separate folder
• Empty the space on hard disk
• Increase Outlook performance

Compressing PST file will no longer be trouble by using third party tools.