Thanks to the minute allocation of mailbox size at my current contract site (25mb, I kid you not), I have a lot of mails in three or four .PST files.

Now, I work off a laptop, and knowing the ‘fragility’ of .PST files, I keep a backup copy of the files on the laptop and one on a network drive too, just in case.

However, the netwrk drive allocation is also a bit miserly (100mb), and I’ve filled it. Can I ZIP the PSTs on the network drive? Well, I know I can, but if I do so am I running the risk that all I’ll have is a backup copy that probably won’t work, should I need it?

ZIP is lossless, so yes you can zip a PST file.

Set up a rule to forward everything (in *and* out) to gmail?

.PSTs are data. You can Zip data. Though you won’t be able to open the Zipped copies directly from within Outlook.

That said, if you’ve enough mail to merit “three or four” archive files when the size limit has been 20Gb for the last decade (and 2Gb prior to that) then Zip isn’t going to help you much with 100Mb of storage.

Are you sure you haven’t got your megs and gigs confuddled? Something doesn’t add up here, I’d be tempted to kick the problem back to your ID bods for not supplying the tools to do your job.

Have to infrequently zip our users PSTs the feckers keep every single email from the beginning of time ‘just in case’ and they wonder why Outlook is slow

Set up a rule to forward everything (in *and* out) to gmail?

DO NOT DO THIS

It will almost certainly be against work policy, and even if it’s not it should be. People sending you emails are not expecting them to be forwarded to an unknown (to them) and unvetted third party. ESPECIALLY not Google as they openly state that anything stored on their servers is theirs and they can rifle through it and do whatever they want with it.

I know this has been covered on here before, but I’m saying it again to keep it in people’s minds and maybe someone might end up here from a search engine.

Manage your own backups of your laptop – keep a HD at home or something and just back them up.

I can’t remember how to do it (we are forced to use lotus notes) but in outlook you can do a compress of the pst file (remove white space from the database).

The E in email stands for “evidence”. I keep all emails so I can show what I was asked to do, and my response detailing why it was a stupid idea and would end up costing us money 😉

Are you sure you haven’t got your megs and gigs confuddled? Something doesn’t add up here, I’d be tempted to kick the problem back to your ID bods for not supplying the tools to do your job.

I’m really not, although it turns out my network drive allocation is 250mb, not 100mb (but I’ve still filled it). And the chances of me changing the storage policy for A Certain Building Society Famed For The Woods Behind It are pretty slim.

Anyway, it looks like I can zip up the copy of the PST backups that I keep on the network drive. Smashing, thanks.

I just forwarded an e-mail from a couple of years ago this morning – had a doc which somebody had lost. I like keeping all my e-mails (OK, so I could delete some, but most of the storage is taken up with e-mails like this with attachments, which are typically the ones which are most useful to keep).