Even if you do your best to keep your Microsoft Outlook inbox empty, your Outlook data file will continue to grow and and can eventually impact Outlook’s performance … unless you remember to periodically compact the data file.
Fortunately, compacting the Outlook data file is easy, as we show you in this article.
Within Outlook, you first need to click the File Menu in Outlook and then click the “Data File Management” item. This will open up an “Outlook Data Files” dialog box, as shown in the first of the two pictures below. Within that box, you want to click on the “Settings” button, which will then open up the second dialog box shown below.
The resulting “Personal Settings” box is the one that does the trick for you. All you have to do now is click the “Compact Now” button, and your Outlook data files gets “compacted.” I am not an expert on the internal workings of Outlook, but my understanding is that this goes through and eliminates the space that is still reserved for the emails that you have deleted. When you delete an email in Outlook, even after you permanently delete it, space is still reserved for it until the Outlook data file is compacted.
This works in Outlook 2003, and I am told it works in Outlook 2007 (which I do not use yet). I am not sure about earlier versions of Outlook, but you can always try it and see.
One more thing: you can also do yourself a big favor by periodically cleaning out your “Deleted” emails folder. Any email you delete is stored there, so you can actually undelete it if you want to. The problem is that this tend to pile up and can take up an enormous amount of space. All you have to do is right-click on your deleted-emails folder and select the feature that allows you to permanently delete the emails.
Related Posts:
- Importing Outlook into Gmail
- Keeping your hard drive in good shape
- Adding Fonts to Your PPC/Smartphone
- Using Text Files for Handy Reference
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You might even want to consider a free alternative to Outlook. I’ve been a user of the big O since Outlook 97 and have used every version up to and including Outlook 2007. After years of waiting and hoping for the Office team to really clean house, re-code Outlook and (IMNSHO) get it right I finally gave up on it and moved to Thunderbird. I loved the Outlook interface and much of it’s functionality, but came to the conclusion that the program was destined to remain an overweight memory hog that periodically hangs and needs to be restarted – so often that I’d even resorted to creating a little script to do it automatically. (Outlook doesn’t like to really shut down – you can make the interface go away easily but the service itself often remains in memory, forcing a manual shutdown) Maybe this is a function of the UNIX based email system I used it with, I don’t know. I’ve heard from several people that it works very well with Exchange (no surprise there) but there are still cavemen like me in the world who don’t use Exchange. In the meantime, Thunderbird has been a great substitute. Junk mail filters are a snap, it loads and runs quicker than Outlook and rarely hangs. My only disappointment is the calendaring functionality (Firebird or Lightning). Compared to Outlook’s shared calendaring, Mozilla’s offerings are visually unattractive and functionally lacking – kind of like the calendar on the average cellphone. But then there’s always Google Calendar and the available add-ons to sync GooCal with varoius offline calendars.
Excellent points, capo: you always make good points. It is hard for many to get away from Outlook, though, as a lot of folks rely on Exchange Server. GooCal will eventually change that, I suspect.
An alternative to Exchange is Zimbra [1]. Om Malik (gigaom.com) uses that [2], or at least he did. I’ve been looking into this as a potential Exchange/Outlook replacement, but haven’t yet moved to it because it’s not yet there for me. Still, a worthy option to use in place of Exchange? We’ll see.
I agree with capo – I LOVE Thunderbird. I use it (with IMAP) for my email and keep Outlook specifically for my PIM (contact/calendar/todo/notes).
[1]: Zimbra – http://www.zimbra.com/
[2]: Om Malik on Zimbra – http://gigaom.com/2006/03/16/zimbra-email-done-right/
Excellent resources for me to check into, Thomas. Thank you!
Sounds like I need to get my butt into gear, as my dad used to say, and check out Thunderbird. I haven’t used it in a couple of years, and sounds like it has matured a lot since then.