When my outlook XP froze on Monday I thought it was going to be an easy fix…reboot on you go scenario. After searching and trying many suggestions on what is apparently a common problem with this version (and earlier) having a 2gb size limit for the .pst file I luckily came across the most helpful problem solver post at www.peeniewallie.com/2006/02/you_have_exceed.html.

The advice from the microsoft site didn’t fix the problem and most of the other posts I’d dug up followed the same track. The worrying part was that most of the advice stated when the .pst file exceeds the limit then your file was corrupted and only truncating your .pst file would fix the problem but you had no control over what was going to be deleted. I ended up buying O2M to move my files over to my Mac Mail client and discovered that it did an excellent job converting my emails, calendar and contacts for Mail (effortlessly converting the “corrupted” .pst file) but found that the emails didn’t remain categorised in their folders so then had to sort through 1000’s of emails (finally deleting most) into the same structure as I was used to with Outlook XP.

Maybe I have way too many categories for my emails but that’s the way I’ve worked and know. Making a new .pst file and moving your superfluous emails within outlook as explained in the peeniwallie link above would have fixed the problem easily and all my information was kept. Most people are probably using newer versions of Outlook which apparently have a 20gb limit but for those without it might save you some time to create a new .pst file when your current .pst file reaches around 1.7gb.

Mine froze at 1.80gb (there is no warning when you reach the 2gb limit). And if anyones wondering, yes, my emails were getting archived, my deleted items were always emptied and most of my unnecessary items were deleted. I hope this saves someone some time if they come across the same problem.