Phil Harris Blog: Split large .pst files with Microsoft Outlook’s Archive option

Tuesday, 10 June 2014

Split large .pst files with Microsoft Outlook’s Archive option

Microsoft outlook does not provide any facility to directly split large pst file into small pst file. User can user Archive feature in Outlook to Split large pst-file into multiple small files by yearly Archive. User can run the Archive process multiple times, each time to a new pst-file. This splitting process can be done via Archive feature in Outlook. By archive feature you can split your files for quarter year, one year or for two year as per your requirement.

For splitting file you must configure Outlook to archive based on the Received date inspire of the Modified date. So that you can prevent emails which have been modified or received after your archive date from rest of your .pst-file.

Now that Microsoft Outlook is prepared for large file into small multiple files. You have to use following steps:-

Open the Archive dialog box.

For Outlook 2007 and previous versions you will see following msg-
File-> Archive…
Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 following msg will be displayed-
File-> Cleanup Tools-> Archive…

Now Select: Archive this folder and all subfolders
After that click on the top level folder to select the entire mailbox in spite of the currently selected folder.
Now set the “Archive items older than:” you can choose date to the 1st of January of the year after you want to create your first archive for. For example if you want to create your first archive folder for 2011 and previous, set the date to the 1st of January 2012.
Or you can check the option which shows:

Include items with “Do not Auto Archive” checked.

Now specify a name and a location for your .pst-file for 2011 and previous year. Make sure that this is a location of your local computer and all your network sharing is off at the time of archiving.

Example: D:\Documents\Outlook Files\2011.pst

Now Click OK.

After archiving has finished, repeat the above steps but you must specify a different date in step 4 and a different folder name in step 6 as shown below in Image:-

You can use the Archive feature to split your large .pst-file into small files.

Once you’re done with creating yearly archives, you may notice that your original .pst-file still has a large size. Reason is very simple a .pst-file is a database and, for performing operations, space freed up by removed item. This space is directly being returned to the file system after operation. This space is called “white space”.

Microsoft Outlook automatically return this “white space” when a certain amount of it exists in a .pst-file (outlook can be use up to 15 percent) and the computer is idle. After starting this process manually you can use compact now button to return this “white space” as free space on your disk drive. Size of your .pst has been decreased.

Also make you can include these newly created .pst-files in your backups. Because you are no longer add or remove data to these pst-files. You need not to include them in your daily backup’s files and so this back up data will save your time and space.

If the above process did not help you or making some difficulty in process. I would recommend to such people to try third party application. Firstly you should try free version, if you are satisfied with software capability then purchase the full version license. You can download this application from here: