Cannot delete mail messages (Outlook 2000 SP-3 (9.0.0.7303))

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For a while now I’ve had problems deleting email – and folders. At work, that is.
I receive a lot of email, and our network admin restricts us to a maximum of 450mb on the server, so I have a lot of Personal folders and inbox rules to filter mail to them so I stay under the limit. But a few months ago I started having trouble deleting mail from my Personal folders. Not all folders, and not all mail in any folder – I can be going through a folder deleting messages I don’t need and all of a sudden I start getting a popup error, and then I can’t delete anything from that folder any more. Ever.
I have attached a screenshot of that popup error.
At first I contacted our IT helpdesk, and they were on the phone with me (and had access to my PC) for about an hour, trying different things. They created a second Personal Folders area and moved my less active folders there, in case the problem was because of the size of my PST file. that didn’t work.
PST file info: (I scanned my HDD and I have 4 PST files):
archive.pst 17.5mb
djmoore.pst 373.6 mb
personal personal2.pst 697.7mb
outlook.pst 915mb
If anyone needs the locations of these files I’ll provide them – but they appear to me to be default locations. I know I have never moved any of them.

Well, bad went to worse – we tried moving directories from my Personal 1 to my Personal 2 folders – they would not move. We were able to copy them just fine, but after dragging the original directories to the Deleted Items folder, they would not delete. I get the same error when I try to delete those folders. I can delete individual messages in the folder – for example, if I delete a message today at random, I can go into the Deleted Items folder and select it specifically and delete it – but I cannot delete any messages within the problem directories, and I cannot permanently delete anything by using the right-click method. So right now my Deleted Items folder has 163mb worth of undeletable items in it.
I’ve tried 2 different ‘repair’ functions, neither of which accomplished anything. I have too much work-related emails that I need to keep – it would take forever to print them all (to say nothing of the deforestation that would cause) so if at all possible I’m hoping for a solution that would not involve deleting my PST files. But I’ll consider anything that sounds promising.
And a side question – if anybody can tell me how to tell the difference between the PST files I’d appreciate it – it’s probably common sense, but I’m never really sure which PST file goes with what within Outlook. The only one that seems obvious is the ‘personal personal2.pst’ – I figure that is the 2nd personal directory?
Thanks –

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Well, I’ve looked around for a couple of days and i was only able to find references to this error message in different situations – other than the one I’m experiencing, or other versions of Outlook. Even Microsoft mentions it (article 275186), but only in a different context:

This behavior occurs if the following conditions are true:

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I got that error when my Deleted Items folder was “full.” A search here would turn up the thread. I hope you eventually were able to rebuild a new PST that works.

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Well, THAT was a rough one. Claude – thanks for the pointers; I procrastinated for a while (that’s me all over) and then I backed up my .pst files and did what you had done. It wasn’t as straightforward as I had hoped – for one thing, Outlook wouldn’t let me name the destination folder the same as the source folder when I was importing – but it ended up working. In fact, I had been complaining (just ask my coworkers who are stuck listening to me) that it took forever for Outlook to open up, and then run my Inbox rules (about 5 – 6 minutes total) – but now it starts very quickly! And I was able to delete all the files and folders I hadn’t been able to before! I also had to leave my laptop running overnight to get it done – but all’s well that ends well.

Thanks again, folks!!

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I’ve had that problem a while ago in the same version of Outlook, although I don’t remember the error message. I copied the PST file to a backup drive and deleted the original. Restarted Outlook, imported the data from the backup copy and that seems to have fixed it. Having said that, I never use RTF, my PST file size is around 700Mb.

If you go to the File | Data File Management you’ll see which PST file is the one currently in use.

Hope this helps,

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