Over Size PST File Corruption and Methods to Avoid Corruption

PST files stores all the Outlook data in an organized manner. PST files holds almost all the entities of Outlook which includes emails, contacts, tasks, journals, notes, calendar entries etc. Every time you create or receive any item in your Outlook, it increases the size of Outlook which hampers Outlook functionality in the end if it exceeds the size limit. All the versions of Outlook have certain size limitation, which means it cannot store data beyond that size limit. Size limitation in different versions of Outlook is divided in two segments on the basis of these formats, they are:

1. ANSI code PST file: ANSI code PST file is used in older version of Outlook which included 97, 2000 and 2002. This file format has size limitation of 2 GB. Hence you cannot store PST files more than 2 GB. In case your PST file size grows larger than this size it may lead to oversize which causes corruption.

2. Unicode PST File: Unicode PST file format is used by later versions of Outlook which includes 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2013. This file format has size limitation of 20 GB. Hence if your file size grows larger than 20 GB it may cause corruption in your PST file.

It usually happens when you do not keep a check on the size of your PST file. Your PST file sometimes crosses the size limit of the PST file. After which you cannot store anything on PST. This also slows down the working of Outlook and ultimately your Outlook stops working due to PST corruption.

But this situation could be avoided by keeping the size within limit. People usually delete the files from Outlook and think that this may reduce the size of Outlook, but this is wrong perception because when you delete a file from Outlook, it gets deleted from that place, but leaves an empty space behind. Hence this does not create much effect on the size of Outlook. The most effective way to reduce the size of Outlook is by compacting the PST file. Compaction deletes the empty space from the file which ultimately reduces the size of Outlook. There are two ways to compact PST file:

a) Manual Method: Microsoft provides a utility' Compact Now' to reduce the size of Outlook. But this utility does not provide fruitful result as cannot compact large PST files completely. Hence in that case we need to refer a third party professional tool.

b) Automatic Method: After the failure of manual method the most effective way to compact PST file is by using efficient software from well known brand. Stellar Phoenix Compact PST Tool is the best recommended tool for this purpose. This tool effectively compacts your large PST files by extracting the attachments into a different folder.

Hence you can compact your PST file with this tool to avoid further corruption of Outlook.