Compress PST files in MS Outlook

Compressing an Outlook PST file means to eliminate deleted item space or unused or extra space from PST file and as a result PST file size gets reduced to a large extent. In this article we would be learning how to compact and compress PST file (Personal Folders file) in MS Outlook.

One of the main reasons for compressing PST file is to conserve space on computer's hard disk. Thereby, you can delete unwanted items from the various PST folders and then compact the files to make them smaller. But simply deleting the unwanted email items from each folder only moves them to the Deleted Items folder, which is in the same file. Nothing constructive comes out from this.

You need delete the items from the ‘Deleted Items’ folder to permanently delete them, so that Outlook can compact the file. It is to be noted that the compacting process does not remove all the free space from the file. It leaves either 16 kilobytes (KB) or 4 percent of the file size (before compacting) whichever is greater. Also, to compress PST file, a PST file must meet the following requirements:

1.The file must be 16 KB or larger.
2.The file must have at least 16 KB of space freed since the last time it was compacted.
There are two ways to compact or compress PST file. You can do it so either manually or automatically. Let’s have a look at both of them.
Automatic Background Compaction

PST files that are not on your computer may require manual compaction, due to interactions between the computer where the PST files are stored and your computer.
Automatic compaction takes place as an idle task in the background. The following conditions must be true for this background task to take place:
1.Outlook must be running.
2.The computer must not be engaged in other CPU-intensive tasks such as copying or downloading files.
Manually compressing PST file
1.If the Folder List is not showing, click Folder List on the View menu.
2.Right-click one of the Personal Folders.
3.Click “Properties For Personal Folders”.
4.On the General tab, click Advanced, and then click Compact Now.
5.Click OK twice.

This whole process of compressing Outlook PST file looks to be quite clumsy. Won’t it be better to have software that simply requires selecting PST file that is to be compact? Well, this is possible with PST compress software, which aims at removing extra space from PST file and compress PST in the end. User can compress multiple PST files at once. Software also has the provision of removing the attachments from PST file and extracting & shrinking the attachments to new folder too.

Convert Lotus Notes to Outlook

We are living in a fast developing technical world, where we can switch from one platform to another whenever we want. Additionally, we can be sure of things going smoothly without any anomaly and so we won’t be losing any data while we convert Lotus Notes to Outlook. However, due to unfortunate reasons, it becomes difficult for a user to manage migration from one version of Microsoft product to another, so comparatively one can imagine the tough part to convert Lotus Notes to Outlook.

There is a long list of things that you can be moved without any single issue, but there are things that pose number of problems. Using this Exchange Server Migration Wizard, you can convert Lotus Notes to Outlook and migrate the following:

1. Embedded Document Links- If the data comprises of document links embedded in messages, you can convert these links to URL shortcuts, OLE attachments or RTF attachments.
   
2. Group Scheduling- Migration Wizard performs easy migration of calendar comprising of appointments, notes as well as tasks. But before you convert Lotus Notes to Outlook, you need to accept or decline the pending meeting requests. Migration Wizard converts pending meeting requests with text messages at the time of migration and forces users to manually add appointments to calendar later on. 
    
3. Emails- Using this Migration Wizard, you can easily move emails, phone and discussion messages. In addition to this, messages with attachments are also migrated with all the attachments safe and secure. One important thing to keep in mind here is that if users have any unsent messages which are scheduled for delayed delivery, then these messages will be migrated in sent items of MS Outlook. 
    
4. User Profiles- If in case, you have multiple user profiles in your Notes data that doesn’t exist in Active Directory, we suggest you to use Migration Wizard to help moving the user profiles from Notes to Active Directory.

However, Migration Wizard is not successful in moving just about everything. There are number of aspects which Migration Wizard cannot handle including custom applications, encrypted messages etc. When you have custom applications, you can try converting them using the Exchange Application Converter for Lotus Notes. However, you cannot expect success and might also have to try recoding to make these things work. You might also have to utilize public folders and custom forms as substitution for the custom application which cannot be migrated.
 

Also, the encrypted email messages in your message database will surely be lost after you perform migration with the Migration Wizard as it cannot convert or migrate them at all. It happens because the Wizard cannot access the Notes private keys that were used to encrypt or decrypt the message stored in Notes profile. And so, it is always suggested that you carry out Migration with professional software devised specially to convert Lotus Notes to Outlook.

OST to PST Migration

Migrating from an old version of Exchange Server to the new version is a complex, time-consuming, and tedious process. A thorough planning is needed to be done before replacing the old server from new server. Just a single mistake during the migration process and you will be snatching your hair in anger and frustration. System administrators often use software application for migrating from one Exchange Server to another including all users’ mailboxes and other data stored on old server.

A system administrator needs to be cautious while using software to migrate from old Exchange Server to new Exchange Server. Software may take a long time during the migration process; therefore, being an administrator you should confirm that the migration process is not aborted in between due to any reason. Aborting the migration process can be dangerous. Let us consider a situation to understand how aborting the migration leads into data loss. For example, you are migrating from Exchange Server 2007 to 2010 and during the migration process some hardware related problem occurs due to which the process is aborted.

After rectifying the issue, you find that all data available on old Exchange Server has become inaccessible. Because the migration process is yet not completed, data is not migrated to new server. Another big mistake that you have done before starting the migration process is no backup is maintained. How you will recover mailboxes now?

Solution

You still have chance to recover users’ emails, contacts, notes, etc. An offline storage table (OST) file is created on users’ computers using which you can recover users’ emails. However, for that you need to use OST to PST tool because until you do not convert OST to PST, you cannot access emails, notes, etc. stored in the OST file.

A professional OST to PST tool converts OST file into PST file in just few minutes. While converting OST file into PST file through a self-descriptive email conversion tool, you may need to execute following simple steps:

• Download and install the software on your computer system.
• Collect OST files from users’ computers and place them in a folder on your computer.
• Make a copy of all OST files because if you use original OST files and something wrong will happen during the OST to PST conversion process then you may loss all emails.
• Browse an OST file that you want to convert into the PST file.
• Let the software do its work and wait for the time the process gets completed.
• Save the converted OST file into PST at a destined location.
• Repeat steps 4 to 6 to convert every OST to PST.
• All converted OST files can now be opened with MS Outlook by selecting File > Open > Outlook Data Files option. This way you get your emails back with full accuracy.   

Change OST FIle

Outlook’s Offline file .OST file proves to be an elixir in times of Outlook email disaster situations. OST files are repository of all our offline workload. So whenever there is loss of Outlook emails, OST files can be used to get back all lost emails by converting OST file to PST file using OST to PST Converter. 

It’s important to know the location of OST file in our system, so that in time of urgency you can quickly pop up to the destination. Being locally stored in the system, one can change the location of the local Offline Folders file .OST to a different folder or hard drive.

One can go working offline whenever there is lost connection to MS Exchange Server. You just have to select ‘Work Offline’ option from MS Outlook’s File menu. OST file can also created automatically when you set up Outlook or when you first make a folder available offline. This also applies to when you use Cached Exchange Mode with Microsoft Exchange Server. 

Changing default OST file location is easy; just follow the give below steps:

1. Exit Outlook.
2. Go to Start  Control Panel  Mail  E-mail Accounts.
3. Click View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
4. Select the Microsoft Exchange Server account, and then click Change.
5. Clear the Use Cached Exchange Mode check box.
6. Click More Settings.
7. Click the Advanced tab  Offline Folder File Settings.
8. Click Disable Offline Use, and then click Yes in the dialog box that appears.
9. Click Offline Folder File Settings.
10. Click Browse, go to the location where you want to save your .ost file, and then click Open.
11. Click OK.
12. Select the Use Cached Exchange Mode check box.
13. Click Next button and then Finish.

This changes the default location of OST file of Outlook.