How Long Does It Take to Compact a Large PST File? Let’s Find

Searching for How long does it take to compact a large PST file. This is the right place. If you are highly active on Outlook then you are regularly dealing with emails, notes, journals, contacts, and Notes. When you are using email regularly, you may also receive attachments on a daily basis. Over a period of time, your PST file will become larger.

In the earlier versions of Outlook, it is only providing space of 2 GB. After analyzing the requirements. They start providing the space of 20 GB. But as per the customer’s need, they decided it to be 50 GB. Nowadays this space is also not enough.

As a result PST file becomes heavier. Is it necessary to compact PST files? Let’s see how much you are affected by the uncompressed PST file.

Why do You Need to Compact PST Files

As the PST file size grows there can be multiple problems arise which affect your data as well as Outlook. Let’s find some factors.

• File Corruption - Working with a heavier PST file can create several problems one of them is file corruption. The file can be corrupted and data can also be lost.
• Downtime - As the PST file size grows, there is a delay in sending and receiving emails. This makes you frustrated.
• Outlook Performance - Heavier PST file, affects the overall performance of Outlook. Sometimes you are not able to Outlook, it is taking too much time to open and it can stop working in the middle.

After the evaluation of requirements to compact PST files. Let’s find out the solution to this problem. Is there any method that exists or not?

How to Compact PST Files without Any Errors

As per the need of compressing PST files. You cannot avoid this problem because it can affect your data integrity. Let’s see what are the different solutions to compact a PST file. Actually, there are two methods to do this.

One is the manual method and another is the Professional method. The manual method is not so safe and secure. The professional method is safer and more secure.

Manual Method to Compact a Large PST File

This method is performed using Outlook inbuilt option. It requires some technical knowledge. Let’s follow some steps:-

• Click on File then Account Settings.

• Hit on Data Files and choose the PST file, press Settings.
• Tap on the Compact Now button and the process starts.

Using the manual methods is not a good approach. This method is not supported any kind of filter. You cannot choose the required data to compact. It will compact the whole file. If you want to compact only the emails with attachments so you can be able to do. It takes too much time to compact because it is working on the whole file. If your file has data within GB then it can also take hours of time.

Now, starts the professional approach to how you can compact your PST file in an efficient manner. Is it really worth opting for a professional way?

Also Read: Fix SQL Server Error 5171 without Hassles

Professional Approach to Compact a Large PST File

This approach will help you to know How long does it take to compact a large PST file? After analyzing the manual approach it's time to go with the efficient approach. The manual approach has so many cons. Let’s discuss how the professional approach solves the issues of the manual approach and compact PST files quickly. SysTools PST Compress Tool can solve the shortcomings of the manual method. It makes the process to compact PST files without opening Outlook easy & quick.

1. Let’s deep dive into the features:-
2. You can compress emails with or without the attachments.
3.  Maintaining the folder hierarchy, you can save attachments to another folder after compression.
4. It doesn’t need to compress the whole data, you can select the folders to compress as per your needs.
5. Duplicates can be removed easily so that they cannot increase the size of the PST file.
6. Use the date filter to identify the required files to be compact only.
7. After the compression process completes, a log report is generated with all of the operations performed in detail. So, you can track all of the processes.
8. Don’t need to be admin, it can be operated by the standard user as well.
9. Compress the PST file into the minimum size possible.
10. It is taking care of your data. There is no data loss.
11. Compatible with all Outlook versions.

Now see what steps you have to take while working with this tool.

• Download and Open the software.
• Click on Add File to add the single file, Add folder for folder and use the search for searching a file.

• Tap on Open
• You can use Remove to remove the single file and Remove all for all files.
• Select the required option from Remove Attachments, Compress Attachments, Remove and Save Attachments in a Folder, Remove, Compress Attachments in a Folder, and Next.
• Tick on the Exclude Deleted Items and Exclude Junk Folders.
• Hit on Change to select the location for the resultant file and Next.
• You can select the required items for compression from Mail, Calendar, Task, Journal, and Notes. Choose the Date filter, File size, and Next.
• After completion of the process click on Ok.

Conclusion

Through this article, you learn about the need to compact PST files. There are various reasons to compact. Some serious issues that can occur due to heavier PST files like data loss, file corruption, and Outlook's overall performance. Different methods have been discussed to compact PST files.

The manual method is not recommended because of its shortcomings in not preventing data, and not providing any filter to compact only the required data. The tool is recommended to get better results. In the end, How long does it take to compact a large PST file? And what is the right way to reduce this time? Query solved.