Your *.PST file
Mines approaching almost 3GBs

Maybe I should delete some stuff.

Others, How Big?

With a subject line like that...how could I not click?

One of the advantages of running my own exchange server (home) means no PST, but I do run in cached mode. I'd have to check the server to see exactly how big my box is... It goes back suprisingly far...2001 (long for me) but is mostly txt since I dont do a lot of attachments from home.

on my work laptop I have 3 PSTs totally 2.74....MS can say what they want, I still think they get unstable over a gig

640Mb, but I've only had my work account for a year.

My mail folder at home is north of 6Gb.

Hpw do I find out how big mine is? Is there any harm to having one too large?

I personally think there is.
I dont have any evidence with Outlook 2003..but when I was working in IT in the Outlook XP and 2000 days, anything over 1gb was notoriously unstable.

If you think about it like this, it makes sense:
Your PST is almost a filesystem in itself. Its fairly complex. When it starts to get big then it spans a lot more of your disk. So to the computer its a single file, with bits all over the disk. To Outlook its the entire contents of your calendar, contacts, email, and some settings. The danger is that when it covers a larger area of the disk its more open to subtle curruption...and the PST (and Outlook) is nowhere near as able to deal with that like a real file system is. What I'm getting at is this...one little bit on the disk gets mangled and your entire PST can get shot.

I know MS claims they are considerably more stable and can grow larger now...I've had to recover too many in the past to let mine get much better than 900mb before I make a new one.

I've got to stop beinig so long-winded!

Instead of deleting old stuff (you'll never know when you'll need the stuff you just deleted) try archiving the old stuff.

I archive mine on a yearly basis with a seperate archive file for each calendar year like archive_1996, archive_1997, etc. The old archives are then closed. That way only the current one is active and needs to be backed up as part of your regular backup procedures (you do that, don't you?). The archived files remain static (unless you open them again). I use Google Desktop to index various file types and specific folders and include the archived pst files and so I have a ready reference to all information.

8.08GB - every email I've sent or received since mid-2002 when my machine crashed and burned.

Older versions of Outlook choked at 2GB pst files - the current version seems to be doing fine.

There was a change in the file format with the release of Outlook 2003 and Microsoft now does not really have a limit of how large a file should grow. In the older file format anything over 1gb was a large risk.

dont use outlook.. but my overall mail volume is over 15GB.

1.5 gig on my laptop.

Server, well lets see, so far about 9gigs of email, I really need to update my spam software.

FYI for all you Outlook users the max size limit for Outlook 2003 with a unicode .pst file is 20GB. All older users of Outlook (pre-2003) the limit is 2GB. If you approach these numbers plan to address creating a new archive or .pst. If you hit those marks, your .pst file will corrupt and you may loose information. Users connecting directly to and exchange server do not have the same restrictions...

Now to get my IT department to let me have 20GB, hmmm

I dont use the built in archive function, but I do copy my pst to a new location for backup annually and start fresh. So on my harddrive I have

2002.pst
2003.pst
etc.

Slightly painful to search for older stuff.

I am looking for a good archiving system if anyone can recommend a 3rd party product that archives Outlook messages in a better way than Outlook native functionality.

I know what MS says about sizes...but I'd never go over a GB... I just dont trust the PST as a file system.