Double click on the pst-file or ost-file that you want to shrink.Īfter the compacting operation, there will be around 5% “white space” left in the pst-file or ost-file which is needed for performance reasons.Outlook 2010 / 2013 / 2016 / 2019 / Office 365įile-> Account Settings-> Account Settings-> tab: Data Files.These exceptions are discussed in the sections below. This also gives you a nice overview of all the connected Data Files in your Outlook mail profile.įor some accounts and versions of Outlook, you can’t start the Compact Now process this way. The easiest way to start the Compact Now process is via the Data Files tab of your Account Settings. This is especially true when your pst-file or ost-file is larger than 2GB and you’ve deleted several hundred MB. This means that you can’t use Outlook at that time.ĭepending on your hard disk performance and how much you have deleted, this process could sometimes last for hours! Therefor, you might want to run this process overnight instead.
Unlike the “Auto Compact” process of Outlook, which happens in the background, the Compact Now process happens in the foreground.
Where you can find the Compact Now command for your pst-file or ost-file depends on the mail account type and version of Outlook that you use. Of course you want to directly see the results of your cleanup action and not wait for Outlook to finally shrink the file for you. When you do a major clean up action, it could very well be that you have over 20% of "white space" in your pst-file or ost-file. When more than 20% of the total size of the pst-file or ost-file consists out of “white space” Outlook will automatically shrink the file in the background when your computer is idle. When you permanently delete an item, it will turn into this “white space”. To prevent this from happening, the file contains “white space” Space that can be used by new and modified items. Background info: White space and Auto CompactĪs said, when a pst-file or ost-file would grow and shrink with every action you take in Outlook, it would have a negative effect on performance. You can wait for this to happen or manually initiate the compact process via Compact Now. Instead, it will only do this when a certain threshold is reached. Whether a pst-file or ost-file is being used depends on your mail account type and your version of Outlook.įor performance reasons, Outlook doesn’t directly shrink the pst-file or ost-file when you delete something from it. Pst-files and ost-file are the databases which Outlook uses for storage. I've already emptied the Deleted Items folder too. I have a very large mailbox so I cleaned it up but noticed that the size of my pst-file remained the same.
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