One of the common issues faced by the users of MS Outlook is when the size of PST file containing all the data items of an Outlook account is very large. The maintenance of PST file becomes difficult if the size increases and may affect performance or even lead to corruption. Corrupted PST file has the threat of data loss from the contents of PST file. One solution to avoid such situations is to split oversized PST file into smaller files with the desired size to save our data items from being corrupted.
Need for Splitting PST File
ANSI PST file format was used earlier in Outlook 2002 that comes with 2 GB size limit and after Outlook 2002 version, it supports UNICODE OST file format. In Outlook 2013 and later versions, the size of OST files has been increased up to 50 GB. However, the PST file starts having performance issues when the size reaches around 45 GB that can lead to corruption. To avoid the situations stated, large PST file needs to be split into smaller files.
Method to Split Large PST File
Ways to split large PST file to avoid the performance & corruption issues in PST files that arise due to exceeding size are as follows:
Manual Approach
Outlook does not support inbuilt facility for splitting the PST file. However, we can use features like Archive, move the folder or Import & Export where we create new PST file and export or archive the folder to move it into new PST file. Manual method may be difficult for non-technical users & it cannot split the PST file by date, size, etc.
Third Party Tool
Another reliable way to split the large PST file is by using third party tools like PST Split that can split the PST file into smaller sized files according to date, size, year, or folder. The Tool supports both ANSI & UNICODE PST file formats ensuring that the metadata inside the file is kept intact after splitting. It works with PST files created by any of the versions of MS Outlook.
