Peenie Wallie: You have exceeded the size limit on your mailbox

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February 10, 2006

You have exceeded the size limit on your mailbox - MS Outlook

MS Outlook sucks. Of this, we can be certain. According to an article titled When Microsoft's Outlook Stops Looking Out for You

The problem is this; Outlook 2000 and 2002 (Office XP) only allows a stated maximum data file size of 2gb but the actual limit size is smaller – only 1.82gb.

So, if your Outlook.pst file gets to 2 gig in size, you're apparently running into the brick wall of Microsoft incompetence. I'm running Microsoft Outlook 2003, but it looks like Outlook 2003 has the same 2 gig limitation on the .pst file. The .pst file is a proprietary file format that the dolts at Microsoft use so that no one else can read or write to their files. It's a miserable little format written by liberal geeks and mental cripples that stores everything in one file. Your contacts, tasks, calendars, and emails are all shoe-horned into one poorly organized file. If it gets larger than 2 gig, then you're pretty much hosed. There are some tricks to allow the file to get larger than 2 gig, and some more tricks to repair the .pst files larger than 2 gig, but this seems pretty dicey.

As it turns out, the best option is probably to create a new .pst file, as described in this article about how to create additional .pst files. This is basically a work-around for Microsoft's incompetence, but when you're dealing with incompetence on the scale of the crew at Redmon, Washington, the "great" is often the enemy of the "good".

So, I first created a new .pst file and named it 2004-2005.pst. (File - Data File Management - Add then select the "Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst)"). Once the new .pst has been added, it appears on the left side of Outlook as a high-level folder. You can then move around and copy folders as needed. Each of these .pst files can be up to 2 gig. So, I created two sub-folders "Inbox" and "Sent Items" and moved in all of my emails from 2004-2005 into these folders. You can still search this new .pst using outlook, although you apparently have to specify to search each .pst separately.

I had some old "Archive" .pst files which I'd never used so I deleted them.

Somewhere in here, 4 emails got stuck in my outbox. So, I opened each one and selected an action of "Resend" and each one resent in turn and, after I deleted the 4 mails from my outbox, everything seemed to be working fine.

Finally, I looked at my default Outlook "Personal Folder" and convinced myself that it was formatted as the older Outlook 97-2002 format. I wanted it to be the new 2003 format, so I created another new .pst file named Current.pst and copied my Inbox and Sent Item folders from the default "Personal Folder" under the new Current(.pst) folder. I also copied my Contacts folder, as I didn't want to lose my Contacts. Then, I tried to delete the "Personal Folder", but it wouldn't let me, as it was my default folder, set up to receive and send emails. So, to change this, I went to Tools - Email Accounts - View or change existing accounts and then, where it says "Deliver new emails to the following location", I selected my new "Current" pst file. Then, I went back and deleted the "Personal Folder". Now, it seems to be working. My plan now is to just create a new .pst file and archive my Inbox and Sent Items every year or so when the .pst file hits the 2 gig limit.

Note: If you want to get tricky, you can technically, exceed the 2 gig limit, but if you do, and it crashes, it isn't pretty. Here's an article about repairing a .pst file larger than 2 gig.

Technorati tags: Outlook, Outlook 2003