Solve OST/PST file size issue in older versions of Outlook

The Outlook, most widely used email application by Microsoft is trending in business environment from last couple of years. It is in trend, all because of continued improvements. With the every new version Outlook improved a lot; same goes with the version 2013 which is the latest version of Outlook. This new Outlook version is unbelievably awesome and has many improved old features as well as new features. Below are the few features of Outlook 2013 –

1.      Preview of emails
2.      Respond faster with inline replies
3.      Use shortcut keyboard commands for quick action
4.      Improved contacts book
5.      Customize your Inbox

6.      Attachment Reminder
7.      Improved Cached Exchange Mode
8.      Connect with Outlook.com without any add-ins

9.      Find what you want, Better search option

If we talk about old Outlook versions like Outlook 2002 and prior, those versions used to support ANSI format. Because the ANSI file format does support maximum file size of 2 GB; as a result Outlook 2002 and earlier versions have many file size limitations for OST and PST files. In Outlook 2002, whenever the file size reaches the size of 2 GB, Outlook stops working properly. In fact in some cases this file limitation issue even corrupts that OST file.

Although to deal with such OST/PST file size and corruption issues; we have inbuilt default utilities developed by Microsoft. If you are using Outlook 2002 and facing Outlook hanging issue because of heavy size of OST/PST file then you may use the PST2GB tool to trim the OST file that is heavier than 2 GB in size.

User can also use Scanpst.exe and Scanost.exe commands to repair corrupted .ost and .pst file correspondingly and to solve other Outlook file corruption issues.
          
Default maximum Outlook OST/PST file size with version:
2 GB for Outlook 2002 and earlier versions           
20 GB for Outlook 2003 and 2007                            
50 GB for Outlook 2010                                            

OST/PST file size can be tailored by changing mentioned registry entries:

• MaxFileSize registry entry
• WarnFileSize registry entry
• MaxLargeFileSize registry entry
• WarnLargeFileSize registry entry

MaxLargeFileSize DWORD registry value can be modified if the user wishes to expand the default maximum file size.

Path of MaxLargeFileSize DWORD registry in different versions of Outlook:

User can easily configure the OST/PST file size limits just by changing the registry standards.

Note – If you are going to do this modification for first time then an incorrect change can lead to huge data loss. So before modifying, it is important to take back up of that registry file. So that, in case of wrong input, user can backup whole data by using backed up registry file.