What is an Outlook Personal Folder or PST

Just what is an Outlook personal folder or PST.

The simplest definition is an all in one folder which stores all you Outlook information, this includes

Inbox,
Deleted Items,
Sent Items,
Junk email,
RSS Feeds

Calendar,
Contacts,
Tasks,
Journal, Notes

The only thing it does not actually store is the email account information, but as it stores everything else in a single file and location it means one really good thing, it is very easy to backup

To find the location of the personal folder simply right click on the folder itself, usually Outlook Today and select properties – advanced tab and then you will see the Filename field this will give you the path and the name of the file itself.

As you can see above right clicking on Outlook Today, then selecting advanced gives us the location and name of the personal folder

To get this working on another computer just means copying it from the old computer to the new.

It is worth noting that there are actually two types of personal folder, the ANSI format which comes with Outlook 2000 and XP, this has a maximum file size limit of 2gb which can get filled up very quickly.

The next type is UNICODE which is standard with Outlook versions 2003 and 2007; it offers a much larger storage capacity of 20gb.

Although Outlook 2003 and 2007 are fully compatible with ANSI personal folders it makes sense to transfer any emails or other data into a UNICODE personal folder for the extra storage capacity,

it generally does not take too long these days to use up 2gb, which then means you have to create another personal folder anyway.

As I support many clients on my network I am surprised at the amount of legacy personal folders that I see,

with some users having up to 8 of the ANSI type which makes it very difficult to look after and frequently backup all of them.

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