The Personal Storage file or PST file is where Outlook stores all its data by default. Naturally, over a period of time, as more and more items get stored in this file, the file size increases, raising concerns of corruption of data and slowing down the performance of Outlook. The simplest option would perhaps be to delete as many items as unnecessary and compact the file to reduce the size. However, this also helps only to a limited extent. Further, it may happen that you have deleted an item that you believed was not needed anymore only to realize some time down the road that it could have been useful. What is needed is a way of moving items away from the main PST file so that Outlook can work efficiently but still them keeping them easily accessible in case one needs to recover outlook items. The best way of doing so is to use folders to store items that are not needed on a day-today-basis. Let us take a quick look at how this can help PST files work more efficiently.

To begin with, create a folder called Email within My Documents. You can create subfolders within this in a manner most convenient for you. Experts recommend that you create quarterly or monthly folders depending on the number of items that are added to Outlook and the frequency with which you add them. If you use Outlook extensively on a day-to-day basis, a monthly sub-folder would be a good idea. You could also create folders for Sent Mail and for Deleted Items as well. In other words, you are taking a complete backup and should help you recover outlook items in case of any corruption in the PST file.

Once you have copied the necessary items to the proper sub-folder, you can delete them from Outlook. In other words, you are removing them from the PST file and if you now compact the file, you should end up with a much smaller PST file to work with. This PST file of course will contain only the active email messages, contact lists, calendar items and journal entries that you would be requiring on a daily basis. You will also find that Outlook will open more quickly and work more smoothly. However, there is another major advantage to copying individual emails in this manner.

If you wish to recover outlook items, you do not have to adopt any elaborate import/export processes or restore numerous other items. By just searching for the particular email message or attachment or calendar item that you are looking for using Windows Search feature, you can quickly restore the specific item.

On the other hand, if your active PST file gets corrupted due to software or hardware problems, you might have to carry out a recovery process using third-party tools such as Advanced Outlook Repair from DataNumen. This tool supports integration with Windows Explorer and can fairly quickly restore all the items from damaged PST files.