Outlook 2010 – create new data file or profile?

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I’m trying to understand Outlook better since I deal with it on several computers. Not having an issue right now though but I want to learn some troubleshooting techniques.

I had a problem recently and ending up uninstalling Outlook and reinstalling, basically starting over from scratch. I think that approach was overkill, although it did fix the issue. I’ve had people tell me later I could have just deleted the email account, or the pst, or the profile.

So my question is, when Outlook starts acting up, under what circumstances would I want to create a new profile, as opposed to just deleting the email account and starting over, or creating a new Outlook file.

Thanks

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What was the problem that caused you to reinstall?

The more information you give, the more help will be forthcoming!

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I’m not asking about a specific situation, just trying to understand what circumstances call for each of the 3 different approaches. So I can be better prepared next time I have an issue.

Thanks

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This is all hypothetical so I can’t help.

Will my bus be on time?

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It’s actually very hard to provide a reply without knowing what the situation will be. Unless there is a corruption of a .pst file, which I never experienced, I don’t see the need to get rid of it. Also never had to recreate profiles.

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It’s actually very hard to provide a reply without knowing what the situation will be. Unless there is a corruption of a .pst file, which I never experienced, I don’t see the need to get rid of it. Also never had to recreate profiles.

My Outlook 2007 .pst file got overloaded once, and quit receiving additional email. I was able to copy email out of it, so I copied a few chunks out, each less than 2gb, and used the new, smaller files.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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There’s a computer here, Windows 7, where sometimes Outlook 2010 takes 10 or 20 minutes to open. It is pst file located on the C: drive. Sometimes it says “loading Profile” and sits there at that screen, sometimes it says “verifying data integrity” and sits at that screen as the count increments slowly up toward 100% but often never reaches it, just stays locked up. Or it may eventually open. They’ve run the pst repair tool, and created a new profile. That worked for a short time only. I also see an old pst file, renamed, in the folder, so it looks like they tried that too.

Thanks

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There’s a computer here, Windows 7, where sometimes Outlook 2010 takes 10 or 20 minutes to open. It is pst file located on the C: drive. Sometimes it says “loading Profile” and sits there at that screen, sometimes it says “verifying data integrity” and sits at that screen as the count increments slowly up toward 100% but often never reaches it, just stays locked up. Or it may eventually open. They’ve run the pst repair tool, and created a new profile. That worked for a short time only. I also see an old pst file, renamed, in the folder, so it looks like they tried that too.

Thanks

You might try setting up automatic archiving, so that the .pst file never gets over 2GB. If the .pst file gets too much data in it, it will have problems.

If lowering the size of the .pst file didn’t fix things, I would create a few new .pst files, and I would move chunks of data to the various files, making sure that each one was less than 2gb in size. (By creating new .pst files, you are starting fresh, bypassing any issues that may be in the original .pst file.)

And make sure that it never gets to 2gb!

You can also delete and recreate the profile. If you use the same .pst file, it’s an easy matter to delete and recreate the profile.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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How big is the pst file? Have you tried to compress it?

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I’ve reduced the pst file size down to 3 GB but the Godaddy webmail page shows it as 10 GB. Godaddy says they need to re-sync the account. The person who owns the account is trying to find their PIN now. Thanks

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Due to many assorted problems in the past – mostly of my own making – I’ve set a few principles to oil the works of Outlook. working on the principle that the .pst files are mine to transfer wherever I want without worrying about licences or other distractions.

I have many years of mail history which I have divided up into single year archives. This allows for off-site backup and smaller file sizes of current files to reduce data loss.
Additionally I categorise subjects into their own files which are separate from the general mail file, again to preserve and allow for easy searching.
If (when) things go wrong I can reassemble the file segments onto the existing Outlook program, a renewed install or even in a different computer.
When I take my phone or a tablet to a specific meeting I can transfer only the relevant mail for all time without needing everything, Reduces the dependence on notes and clarifies what was said/decided.

Since I started to do this in 2000 I have not had a single mishap or data loss and reinstalled a few times and changed computers three times without a hitch.
As you were looking hypothetically, for preventative measures, it’s the best one overall that I have used. On Jan 1st 2013 I will close off the present file rename it to Archive 2012 and start anew. Not complicated and prevention is always better than cure.

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Due to many assorted problems in the past – mostly of my own making – I’ve set a few principles to oil the works of Outlook. working on the principle that the .pst files are mine to transfer wherever I want without worrying about licences or other distractions.

I have many years of mail history which I have divided up into single year archives. This allows for off-site backup and smaller file sizes of current files to reduce data loss.
Additionally I categorise subjects into their own files which are separate from the general mail file, again to preserve and allow for easy searching.
If (when) things go wrong I can reassemble the file segments onto the existing Outlook program, a renewed install or even in a different computer.
When I take my phone or a tablet to a specific meeting I can transfer only the relevant mail for all time without needing everything, Reduces the dependence on notes and clarifies what was said/decided.

Since I started to do this in 2000 I have not had a single mishap or data loss and reinstalled a few times and changed computers three times without a hitch.
As you were looking hypothetically, for preventative measures, it’s the best one overall that I have used. On Jan 1st 2013 I will close off the present file rename it to Archive 2012 and start anew. Not complicated and prevention is always better than cure.

My pst files are for each quarter. After three months, I create a new one and make it the default.

I give them names which are self-explanatory. For example:

2012 Oct-Dec.pst — this is the one that is currently the default and being used by Outlook.
2012 Jul-Sep.pst — this is the previous one.
etc.

Each year I generate four of these PST files. They never get overloaded (i.e. over 2 GB in size), and I never have any problems with them. And by doing this, I automatically have an archive of all previous quarters.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Thanks Radio and mrjim. I expect to have some next week to try to sort through the 10 GB of mail and create some archives. Thanks for the suggestions.

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Vincenzo, getting back to your original question, I think PSTs have been covered in sufficient detail, except for one thing: I said that the size limit of a PST is 2 GB. However, this is not exactly correct. If you set them up in Unicode format rather than in ANSI format, the size limit is much bigger than that.

On the question of profiles: Most of our users have Outlook 2007. Sometimes they have problems with Outlook, so I delete the Outlook profile and then recreate it. If you do this, make sure you write down the settings in the profile before deleting it, so that you can set up the new one correctly. (Make sure that the settings are correct before putting them in the new profile!)

They may have more than one profile. You will need to determine if they really need more than one. More than likely, whenever they had a problem with Outlook, someone simply created a new profile, and didn’t delete the old one. See if you can reduce the number of profiles down to one.

To get to the profiles in Windows 7, click Start (i.e. the Orb), then Control Panel, then Mail. Then click Show Profiles. Click Properties to get all of the settings, and then Remove to delete it. Then click Add to recreate it.

This has nothing to do with your PST files. You can use the same PST files for the new profile as you did for the old.

The only way the PST file(s) would affect performance (other than if they are corrupted in some way) is if they were on a slow drive; everytime Outlook tries to access them, it will be a slow process.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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mrjim, thanks for the tip about ANSI vs Unicode, I’ve done some research on that now and I’ll check that. BTW if I create some archives, will they still slow down Outlook if they are being shown in the folder list? Do they need to be closed down from being shown there so Outlook does not need to load them? These will be IMAP pst’s. Thanks

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mrjim, thanks for the tip about ANSI vs Unicode, I’ve done some research on that now and I’ll check that. BTW if I create some archives, will they still slow down Outlook if they are being shown in the folder list? Do they need to be closed down from being shown there so Outlook does not need to load them? These will be IMAP pst’s. Thanks

If they are imap, and if you have a slow connection, then they could slow things down whenever they are accessed, which is pretty much all the time in imap. My guess is that if you leave them open, they could slow things down, but if you close them, you won’t have that problem. (I say “I guess”, because I’ve never actually seen that specific situation.)

The fastest way for Outlook to interact with PSTs is if Outlook is on one hard drive, and the PST(s) in question are on another hard drive. In this way, Outlook can access its code and the data on the PSTs at the same time. If everything is on the same hard drive, only one thing can be accessed at a time, which will be slower than if the program and the data are on two separate drives.

Anything which gets accessed (either reading or writing) which is on a “distant” drive (e.g. a cloud drive) will be slower than if it is on an internal hard drive.

Putting your programs on an SSD and your data on a traditional hard drive would be not only fast, but your data would be on the more dependable storage medium, thereby having less risk of your losing it.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Even though the size limits have been increased, I still believe that big PST files are not a good habit.
I experience no slowdowns from having quite a few pst files listed on my Outlook.

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OK thanks.

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