Outlook 2003- Help resolve multiple buggy issues.

[OatMan]

Environment:
Single PC/Single User, WinXP Pro, Office 2003 Pro. Home office PC for self-employed Lawyer working from home. PC is critical for business. (Stressed out and can?t afford downtime)
PC is used for web based research (IE7), Outlook for just about everything, Office 2003, Acrobat Pro, Word Perfect 12, Fax, various other lawyer specific software. Nothing demanding.

PC ? is a bit long in the tooth, but well maintained 2GHz Athlon with 2GB ram, Lots of Disk space, Iomega REV 32 GB for back ups. PC is otherwise running well. User needs to maintain ready access to all email correspondence including file attachments going back basically for ever. (didn?t think this was a problem at less than 2GB) Outlook data file was originally imported over from a previous version of Outlook at the time this PC was built (four years ago). Problems are recent (last year or so).
Local Outlook.pst file is about 1GB in size.
Local Archive.pst is about 250MB in size.

Problem(s) Description:
Outlook has been getting progressively more buggy over time. The local PST file seems to be having problems (corruptions?).
Have already tried 1 ? ?Clean? install of Outlook, creating new PST file and importing data.
2 ? Using MS scanpst to fix corruptions. Neither solution has helped. Outlook is working, but not well and with annoying (but not show stopping)

intermittent issues such as:
1. Unexpected application crashes/freezes. Sometimes Outlook will not re-launch with out a reboot of PC.

2. On Launch of Outlook THIS error frequently appears: Data file ?Personal Folders? was not closed properly. This file is being checked for problems? This check will then take several minutes and even when it is apparently completed Outlook will remain very slow performing, but will recover. This is separate from the ?Slowness issue? described in #3. This behavior will occur after the PC properly shuts down, or even when the program is closed properly and then later re-launched.

3. Outlook will often inexplicably become very slow with poor responsiveness, but not totally unresponsive. This will persist for extended periods, and usually resolved with reboot of PC. PC will otherwise be performing perfectly fine. Only outlook seems to be affected. Does not seem to be related to any other Outlook issues (such as Personal Folder consistency check) or any other PC activity (virus scans/diagnostics/etc.)

4. Frequent problems moving email messages. Give THIS error: Item could not be moved. It was either already moved or deleted or access was denied. This happens when the conditions suggested by the error message are in fact not the case. Most frequently happens when trying to move a deleted message from the deleted folder to the inbox or any other folder in Outlook. Much less frequently occurs when moving a message from a sub-folder in Outlook Personal Folders to another sub-folder. The only work around I have found is to forward the message to the same account to receive it back to the inbox. The message can then be moved as normal.

These are the most common issues. I am concerned and want to find a permanent solution to making Outlook happy. I am considering a complete fresh rebuild of the PC (clean install of OS from scratch), but I am not confident that will work as once the data is imported from the backup PST file I expect everything to continue to be problematic. I am not that knowledgeable about Outlook troubleshooting but I have spent much time researching and haven?t found anything helpful.
TIA!!!

 

[OatMan]

PLS help me heal the local PST database file, or find a way to import that data into a clean (and healthy) install!!! OR something else I can't think of.

 

[OatMan]

**UPDATE**

My solution for now (hope it works) is to use multiple pst files. I created a new pst file and made it the "active" mail file. All active subfolders will move to the new pst file and all inactive folders will stay along with all his unsorted(inbox), deleted, sent mail. After compacting and archiving files with large attachments the new active pst file is 200MB and the old pst file is 600MB.

We have worked out some mail rules to keep things managed involving archiving and every calendar year we'll start a new fresh pst file. It's a workable solution, however inelegant.

**HELP STILL NEEDED** This has created a new (minor) set of problems.

I've worked most of it out, but I'm not sure what to do about CONTACTS and CALENDAR.

I'm trying to have the simplest solution possible for a not so computer savvy Lawyer dependant on Outlook. I had hoped to just have him continue using the OLD Calendar and Contacts, but that is unacceptable. Too many outlook functions work only with the "active" Contacts and Calendar and info will quickly get confused and lost among the two versions. But simply moving everything over also creates problems. Many recurring appointments became broken and others were lost or truncated in a few ways. The user also needs to keep everything going back several years for audit purposes. Some of the oldest stuff could be kept in archived/backup pst files, but even so it's still unacceptable.

I can't find a way to export ONLY calendar and CONTACTS data for Import back to the "active" file. Is there a way to do this without messing up recurring appointments or other calendar and contact info??? I was thinking of making a dupe copy of the old pst file and deleting all the mail then imported once ONLY calendar and contact info remained... I have to test that one...

Any other suggestions? I wish I could make the old Calendar and Contacts "active" with everything else "active on the new pst file so I could then remove the new Calendar and Contacts and leave the old ones. Then the confusion of two of each would be gone, and there would be no risk of info accidently being split up among the new and old versions as is the case now.

TIA once again.

 

[bwatson283]

Right click my computer->Properties->Advanced->Settings in the Preformance section->Visual Effects tab, adjust for best performance-->then go to advanced and mess with the page file size. That might help it respond a tad better. How about a Scandisk and a defrag?

 

[OatMan]

Originally posted by: bwatson283
Right click my computer->Properties->Advanced->Settings in the Performance section->Visual Effects tab, adjust for best performance-->then go to advanced and mess with the page file size. That might help it respond a tad better. How about a Scandisk and a defrag?

I'll give this a shot. How should I adjust the pagefile? It is currently the default setting.

I have performed all the usual routine maintanence. Windows updates, office updates. Virus, spybot, adaware checks. Disk optimization (scandisk and defrag) from a boot disk, so the entire disk could be optimized.

**UPDATE**

While I have not yet taken the action suggested by bwatson283 above and will ASAP, the original (priority) issues still/again persist.

I created a new local PST file and made it active/default. The vast majority of date/mail folders/etc. was retained in the old PST file to be gradually processed.

The idea was the all incoming mail and organization would now occur in the new PST file and the mail in the old PST wold gradually be archived or otherwise manually stored outside of outlook. A new personal folder hierarchy was designed and there would be regular archiving to control PST file size.

The new PST file was less than 1 GB and would never grow past approximately that size. (though I see no reason that PST file size should have ever been an issue as it was at no time larger than 1.1 GB even before I made these changes)

For a time after doing this the issues described in my original post abated. After a few weeks though they started to gradually return. They are now as bad as ever with the new PST file. I have spent significant time personally researching this and have found nothing new to try. I have consulted a few experienced IT contacts and no one has any significant insight or suggestions that are realistic to the circumstances (I am not implementing an exchange server for one user).

Not really sure what to do at this point. The two issues that most concern me are issue "2" and "4" from the first post.

Any help or even a pointer somewhere that may be helpful would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks once again.

 

[tennesota]

The symptoms really sound like a corrupt .pst file.

What format is the .pst file?

Right click on .pst file.
Properties for Personal Folders
Advanced button

Any format of 2002 and earlier can be problematic because of the 2GB max size limitation. I have seen .pst files show corruption at 1.6GB. Another consideration is the number of "items". There is a max number of items allowed in older .pst files (similar to max # of entries for an Excel spreadsheet).

If the .pst is 2002 or older format you can create a new .pst and import the messages. If you've already done that then I don't know what to try next.

 

[OatMan]

Where can I find out more about number of items? There are a large number of folders for mail organizing and of course lots of mail.

PST is outlook 2003. I remember it asks which type when I created it. But looking at the properties as you directed it just says "Personal Folders File". I would expect it would say outlook 2003, or outlook xp, or outlook 2000, or outlook 97 or something right?

To this point (over months now)
I tried exporting, creating new PST, importing. no good. I tried this with a complete clean install of Office. No good.
I have tried using a second new default PST and NOT importing anything and keeping all the old stuff in the old PST (no longer default/active). No good both new and old PST have problems.

No PST file has at anytime been larger than 1GB and currently they are both around 600MB.

I also tried the PST repair tools from MS. no good.

Is there anyway to start fresh without losing all the mail and without losing the outlook personal folder hierarchy?

Thanks for the help! It is greatly appreciated. I'm so at a loss here.