Email administration can involve a variety of tasks. Some of these tasks are complex while others are fairly mundane. Oftentimes administrators have to support memory problems; sometimes it is configuration issues and settings, while other times it is underperforming or, at worst, non-performing clients and servers.

One of the easier issues an administrator has to support is the problem is space allocations in regards to disk or file space. On a system of limited disk space this can be a minor challenge. Conserving space on a hard disk will require the administrator to delete unwanted or unnecessary for business items from the various dot pst (.pst) and dot ost (.ost) files.

But if all your data resides on an Exchange server then this process in not needed. Most often, though, the relevant user data can be found in personal folder files such as the dot pst files. These files can be found by searching for files with the dot pst (.pst) extension. Outlook data items such as email messages, tasks, contacts, etc. reside within the dot pst files.

Once the non-critical information has been deleted then the administrator can begin the process of compacting the files which will reduce the size of those files and thus free up critical space on the system.

If an administrator has deleted and then compacted a lot of space but still finds that the space freed up is not enough to meet his needs then the administrator can do one of two things:

1. Backup or archive mid-tier (or medium level) critical information to free up additional space.
2. Delete items from the Deleted Items Folder.

Creating backups and archiving data should be a part of any administrator’s normal day to day activities as it is important to keep critical data in permanent storage mediums should the need to restore data for any reason come up. I’ve discussed on other occasions the reasons why a regular maintenance schedule should include backups but as a brief review they can include: risks of loss of data due to corruption, hardware failures, power failures or spikes, viruses, intentional or unintentional data being overwritten, etc.

The second thing an administrator can do to free up additional space is as simple as deleting items from the Deleted Items Folder. This can either be an overlooked task or just be a lack of knowledge to delete those items. In their haste administrators will sometimes mistakenly delete items but will forget or get distracted and not remember to take the next step and empty out the Deleted Items Folder.

After those files have been deleted from the Deleted Items Folder then those files can be compacted. Now the process of compacting the files does not remove all the free space associated with those files. About sixteen kilobytes (16KB) or four percent (4%) of the original file size will be left uncompacted.

There are a couple of file size requirements before a dot pst or dot ost file can be compacted.

1. The file must be sixteen kilobytes (16KB) or greater.
2. The file must have at least sixteen kilobytes (16KB) of free space since the last time that it was compacted.

Compacting Outlook files can be run manually or run in the background.

Running the compact process in the background has the advantage of allowing the administrator to perform other administrative tasks while the compacting process is occurring. The administrator might want to monitor the file sizes or their directories as they are being compacted. There are few requirements for the compacting process. At the very least is that Outlook must be running. And in the interests of performance the administrator ought to run the background compacting process during low CPU demand periods.

It’s very easy to manually run the compacting process. Administrators can manually compact files with the following steps:

1. From the File menu, select Data File Management.
2. Select the user’s Personal Folder and then click on Settings.
3. From the General tab, click “Compact Now”.
4. Click OK or hit enter.
5. Click  on “Close”.

How often an administrator should compact files is a matter of personal experience and should be included and be consistent with the maintenance policies in place for the corporation. This will make it easier for new or backup administrators to maintain the corporate email environment. One compact scheduling suggestion is to compact Outlook files once or twice a year. But if you find that Outlook is increasingly running slow or that your system is running out of space then you might want to consider compacting your Outlook files sooner than is scheduled.

Delete Item Space in Outlook

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