Not sure if this will help, but I used multiple PST folders to store my emails. Since I never delete an email, I organized them into different files and monitored the file size, if one got too big, I created a new one with same name, different dates.

It has been awhile since I have used outlook (and program is corrupt on my laptop here) I might be wrong in how to instruct you to create a PST file.

If I recall correctly, you click on File (or top left pull down) and click on New, then there should be a "create outlook data file (.pst)" or something. Then, all you need to do is save it in a location you 'can' find easily.

Unfortunately I cannot help you find the full file you have unless a search for .pst brings up a file about 2 gig.

Drew

This problem occurs because the .pst and the .ost files have a 2 gigabyte (GB) size limitation, and the error message occurs when it is exceeded. The Inbox Repair Tool cannot correct this problem.
To resolve this problem, download the tool from the following Microsoft Download Center link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B33B1DFF-6F50-411D-BBDF-82019DDA602E&displaylang=en

Info and link from ....
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296088



Regards Woody

Thanks, Woody, but I can't get it to run. It downloads, and sits there as a locked zip file, and says it unzips the five files within, but it won't go any farther than saying it unzipped the file. Typical Microsoft. No explanation.

You need to extract the files to a folder.

I would SAVE the microsoft zip file to my desktop and extract to a new folder.

I use a utility called Alzip .... this gives me an "extract to folder" option that takes care of everything for me.

http://www.altools.com/Downloads/ALZip.aspx

Regards Woody

Once again, thanks Woody. My neighbor stopped by (a Rockwell software engineer), took a look at your message and did some of that programmer wizard magic--now it's working again.

I'm not entirely sure what he did, and probably can't replicate it, but now I know where to go for help.

Use gmail or hotmail & join the clouds. Either one has a bunch of storage

no reason to store email on your computer

Copy or print anything you feel like you really must keep.

Hi Poop

I had the same problem, but on a PC and a free program called SCANPST.EXE fixed it, I think Microsoft put it out. The PST file gets corrupted.

Good Luck, Tony

Hello,

Before I would answer with my (never to be humble opinion) set of options, are you running VISTA, XP or a previous like 2000 or ME??

That said, Have you done some of the basics, such as a registry clean( and no, I won't recommend one because they all equally work with their own flaws)?

Have you run either a local and or aftermarket defragmentation program, of late?

If you have already started your PC with a 'Safe Mode', then your RAM is FULL.

Select F2 and reboot from your provided back-up disk.

If none of these are available, let us know on this CR4 Thread.

Keep in touch,

GLB

Hello Poop,

You may find this helpful in the future. And for lost or deleted file recovery

Also a duplicates remover for Outlook to free up space

So, when you said:

"I'm not entirely sure what he did, and probably can't replicate it, but now I know where to go for help."

Did you mean the Rockwell SE or the forum. We only want to be helpful here. With that in mind, it is also useful for the community to know if our responses and/or your outside resources provided a workable solution. REM: sometimes these thraeds are read 2 or 3 years later and what is now an apparent solution may become harder to achieve with the passage of time...

Please close the thread with the action that worked!

Sorry to get on an 'old' saw...

GLB

GLB :

I understand. I might have to come back and do it myself six months from now. He moved pretty fast, but as best as I can recall, he downloaded the PST2GB.exe file onto my desktop screen,where it could then be opened and run. That was the big stumbling block for me.

But before letting it run, he copied the outlook.pst file into a save file. Once PST2GB.exe ran, it truncated enough of outlook.pst so that Mailbox Cleanup would run in Outlook. We deleted the trash file (700 MB) and the Sent file (200 MB), killing nearly 1GB of files.

Everything seems to run OK now. Guess I need to do Mailbox Cleanup once a month. Empyting the trash doesn't really get rid of the deleted files.

MS Outlook files are held in C:\Documents and Settings\[your long on user name]\Local Setting\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.

The best way to deal with this problem is to first - remove all the junk, emails in inbox and sent box that are of no future use then: backup the file to another disc, then archive to a certain date. Be sure you select the head file when backing up or/and archiving otherwise you will only have the Inbox or whichever box you chooes.

Make sure you set a specific file name for example Outlook archives to 2007 Nov 21 (2009-11-21). (why this date format, so that they store in date order). Store these in a Folder that you backup.

This removes the file "burden" in Outlook, but you can access and open these files if you need to in the future. Use File, Open File, then open the named archive file you believe the data is in. This will give a "new" set of folders that relate to the archive, and you can search these as normal and then close these when completed.

Good luck

This may be a stupid reply but have you but have you tried going into "tools", opening "recover deleted items" and delete everything in there? That's where all the deleted emails go and just load up your machine.

Is there anything in computing as quaint as the 2gb file limit in windows? I now do most of my work on a 1.5 terabyte drive. Any serious database on the state level will instantly hit the 2gb wall, shared by all the microsoft databases, including access and (correct me if I'm wrong) sql server. Many of us are now moving to machines with two or more processors, but still the 2gb limit hangs on.

If you're savvy enough to post here you probably don't need to use Outlook anyway. Get yourself multiple free e-mail accounts (the service starting with "G" and ending in "mail" is favorite). Use one addy for incoming, and the others for storage. Email yourself your own current files for archive storage. Do it once a day, and live long and prosper!

Someday, when I hit the lottery, I shall take an ax to all my PCs and laptops, and bid Microsoft farewell forever. Alas, until that day, I am doomed to use Microsoft in my job. It is the crappiest software the world has ever known, but it is my sorry lot to be tied to it.

We were just advocating a work around for out look. I forward to gmail & when I send it has my other email address on it. no way to tell from the outside.

I use gmail [7g of free storage]in place of outlook, my wife uses hotmail the same way

I used to have a comcast account that was similar.

I don't see any reason to use up my memory for email

a very basic example of cloud computing.

My wife had the same problem dealing with this issue with MS Outlook 2GB capacity since she gets too many e-mails. We dealt with it by bringing the laptop to the local computer shop to clean things up, get a lecture to remove junk e-mails, get new folders created, etc. We even used the MS Inbox repair program several times which helped for awhile.

I even recommended to my wife that she open up a Eudora ( e-mail browser ) account and export her e-mail files to Eudora since it does not appear to have any capacity limitations and it has few folders that are easy to find and backup.

We recently purchased MS Office Outlook 2007 under an employee purchase plan and updated our 2003 Outlook and we do not appear to have any more e-mail capacity problems since apparently the latest Outlook application does not have the 2GB capacity limitation.

I hope that the above comments will help with your situation.

Top Gun:

Thanks. My 2003 Outlook is going berserk anyway, and I was trying to figure out how to update it without installing Vista or Windows 7. Unless somebody chimes in here with a nasty opinion on Outlook 2007, maybe I'll give it a try.

Hi poop,

I suggest you de-frag' your HDD. Make sure if you can, that there is no files in the trash you still want to use, then de-frag.

It will wipe out any trash that has been stored and free up the system.

This is the first thing I would have done. It is ok letting others alter stuff in the registry if you don't mind digging yourself out of trouble next time. Because as you do not know what he did, how can you put anything right?

I think it would be a good idea to store archived files on an external drive or burn them to CD.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Microsoft file the trash goes to is called the Recycler folder. To get to it try this:

Reboot to Safe Mode, double click My Computer, double click Local disk C:

Click Tools>Folder Options>View.............
Put a mark in the check-box labeled Display the contents of system folders.
Under the Hidden files and folders section, choose the radio button labeled Show hidden files and folders.

Remove the mark from the check-box labeled Hide file extensions for known file types.

Remove the mark from the check-box labeled Hide protected OS files.
Click the Apply button then, the OK button, then, shutdown My Computer.
Now your computer is configured to show all hidden files.

Now you can see the Recycler folder.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The instructions above will take you to the place the trash is kept. This may be useful, it really depends on what you want to do.

What you need to do is increase the total size of the trash/Recycler folder. To do this:

Right click the Recycle Bin > Properties > this takes you to the Recycle Bin Properties.

From the Recycle Bin Properties screen, you can choose to configure drives independently one by one, or Globally by setting the same size for all drives. And here you can also choose to remove files immediately and not put them in the Recycle Bin at all. Not really the choice I would make!

If you just have a single Drive, or two or more the same size, it is probably easier to set the Drives 'Globally', with all drives adjusted by the slider, under the Global Tab.

If you have several Drives of different sizes, then it may make sense to configure the Drives one by one. Just click the tab of the Drive you want to alter or adjust, from along the top.

Assuming you have one pretty large Drive then I would set it to the Max 10%. But that depends on what you save and how you work. If you have lots of picture they take very much more space than Text. If you mainly save text then perhaps half or less of the Max' 10% can be used.

After the setting is finished, which only takes seconds, click Apply > OK. Finished!

Good luck.

I know it's hard to believe, based on my lack of knowledge about things Microsoft, but I was once an ace real-time programmer like you guys. I worked on Apollo and some of my avionics software is still flying in the Shuttle, SpaceLab and the F15 fighter. I once programmed the motion controls on a 16-axis robot, wrote a compiler, and wrote real-time operating systems for IBM 1800 and DEC PDP-11 computers--from scratch, no less.

I think my reluctance to try to understand Microsoft is the realization that it is a truly crappy piece of software. We sent Apollo to the moon with 64K of memory. Once you've done that, dealing with Microsoft is like sticking your hands in a pile of stinky horse manure. A great big pile! One that keeps growing and getting stinkier every year.

Sorry to rant, and thanks for all your help. With you folks around, I don't have to stick my hands in the manure more than once or twice a year.

I worked many years ago for Univac, the ones that made the onboard Apollo computer, we maintained the almost same hardware, but only in its "civilian" work clothes!!!! It was the first computer I ever worked on......

I learnt a lot with Univac, I left just before it became part of UniSys.....luckily!!!

The Univac 494? We used that for the Apollo groundstations. I got to write HMI display software for the ground stations.

The avionics computer I worked on was the IBM 4Pi. In those days, NASA would hand us programmers a document that said a program had to execute in X microseconds and require Y bytes of memory. Our goal was to beat the spec. Like I said, we sent Apollo to the moon on 64K words of memory. I doubt if Microsoft's programmers could write a keyboard driver in 64K.

It gives me great satisfaction to know that some of my software is still flying, even after 40 years. It seems that once software has been "man-qualified," NASA keeps it around, generation after generation. Sometimes I feel like one of the players in Clint Eastwood's movie, "Space Cowboys."

I worked on those (494) too at London Hospitals and BEA......they were far better than the IBM c**p that they were replaced with!!!

Attention Microsoft: I apologize for what I said about your crappy software. I didn't know you were listening. I promise never to badmouth Windows or Outlook again. I see what your long reach can do, and I shall not offend you again.

So please don't blow up my system again. It took me two hours to get it back up after you took your revenge.