I'd just pick a new mail client and make sure it can import PST files.

by Raymond Camden (ray@camdenfamily.com)

I don't know about Outlook but after Outlook Express 4 they stopped allowing exports to other e-mail programs :). God bless 'em!

I'm having success with Evolution although I know nothing about the underlying messaging format yet (although it does have options for standard *nix mboxes and Maildirs)

Can you restore from backup? ;)

by Scott Fitchet (scott@figital.com)

I've been using thunderbird and have not had any issues with it.

by Gary (gary@arndt.com)

I won't even go into the details of the full day I spent dealing with this, as most of that time was a quixotic attempt to retrieve the 3 days of mail I did not have in backups (can you believe the MS utility which is designed to truncate a PST over 2GB chooses to truncate the newest mail, and not the oldest mail?).

But, you see, it's not just about a new mail client. It's the integration of mail/calendar/contacts/tasks that's really handy. I actually like Outlook, other than this, of course. Too bad Chandler isn't further along or that Evolution would run on Windows. Maybe it's time I spend more time getting to know the mail/calendar/contacts applications on my Mac.

by Nathan Dintenfass (nathan@NOSPAMchangemedia.com)

This guy got Evolution running on OSX ...

Not sure if I would recommend the installation but I'm sure something easier will be down the pike soon.


by Scott Fitchet (scott@figital.com)

Couple of notes on Outlook. You also can't have more than 65K messages in one folder.

Here are a few tricks I've learned over the years to keep Outlook happy and healthy.

1) Archive your mail frequently. I archive my deleted, sent mail and client mail each to their own PST archive file. This helps keep down the overall file size of the PST--which helps speed up Outlook.

2) Compress your Outlook PST file regulary. (Right click "Personal Folders", click "Advanced" then click "Compact Now.") The PST file format is a modified version of Access and deleting/archiving your mail still leaves fragments of the mail behind in your PST file. Compacting the database file occasionally will dramatically reduce its size. If you haven't done it in a while, do it before you go to sleep for the night or when you go to lunch--it'll take a while.

3) Try to keep you main Outlook PST file under 256MBs. The larger the file is, the longer it takes Outlook to load and the longer it takes it to find stuff. If you need to find old mail, it doesn't take much to mount an archive PST and search for the mail.

4) My last tip is, rollover your archive files from time to time. I normally use RAR to archive my PST file and then move them to CD. (In case I ever need old mail.) Once you archive it, you can delete the file and Outlook will recreate a new file when it needs it. Deleting the file and having Outlook start from scratch is much more efficient then deleting the items in Outlook.

Anyway, those are the things I've been doing over the past couple of years that have made Outlook more enjoyable to use. Once you get things setup, Outlook will take care of managing itself automatically--all except compressing your archive mail and compress to CD. I only do that about every 6 months, so it's not to troublesome.

- Dan

by Dan G. Switzer, II (dswitzer@pengoworks.com)

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by Jose maria Annus (george752@yahoo.co.uk)