# mailbox too big in Outlook 2007



## whit80 (Mar 10, 2008)

I just upgraded all our desktops to MS Office 2007 and I'm having a problem with one of them. I installed MS Office 2007 and put Outlook in cache mode for all the workstations, but one workstation wouldn't allow me to change to cache mode. It gave me an error message saying the mailbox was too big. At that time, the users mailbox was 5.5 GB so I had them archive enough so that the mailbox shows as 1.7 GB on the server. I tried putting Outlook in cache mode after this, but it still says the mailbox is too big. Everything works fine in non-cache mode. Anyone have any ideas on this? I think the mailbox should be small enough at 1.7 GB to allow this now, but it doesn't want to cooperate. Thanks in advance!


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## whit80 (Mar 10, 2008)

Ha!! fixed my own problem. A previous attempt to run cache mode had left a large OST file on the hard drive,, and when I tried to configure cache mode again, it saw this large OST file and determined this file plus what was on the server was too big and choked. All I had to do was remove the OST file.


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## idgat (Mar 20, 2008)

You should also run the compact option for Outlook pst/ost files.

These files are, in effect, databases of the contents of Outlook. When items are deleted (like junk mail received, spam, bacn, contacts, journal entries, etc) the pst/ost does not automatically shrink. It just keeps growing and growing as more contents are added to Outlook, irrespective of what's deleted.

In addition, Microsoft does not recommend pst/ost files bigger than 4Gb anyway. The archive function can help reduce the size of the pst/ost file (although compact still has to be used)


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