Combining two Outlook 2010 PST files for the same account

  • Thread starter Thread starter koenfucius
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koenfucius

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I have been running Outlook 2010 (32-bit) on Windows 7 (64-bit) since September 2011, with a single email account that I created on this machine.

For some reason, there seem to be two different PST files associated with the single email account that I use:
"Outlook Data File - <profile name>.PST", located in the user's \Documents\Outlook files folder, and
"<email address> - <profile name>.PST", located in the user's \Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Outlook folder.

I only noticed this when I discovered my free disk space was depleting rapidly, because the first file had been growing in size. Looking at some recent backups, the Outlook Data File was about 1GB in size for the first six weeks that I have been using this machine, but it has now grown in size to more than 8GB, and it seems to keep on increasing by several 100MB per week.

The other PST file, referred to by my email address, was about 4GB to start with (it includes three years' worth of emails which I downloaded from the IMAP mailbox when I set the account up), and that has increased just a little, now standing at 4.3GB.

According to the Account Settings/Email tab, new messages are delivered to "<email address> - <profile name>.PST", and the inbox of that file does indeed contain all the email messages one would expect.

However, the Account Settings/Data Files tab shows that "Outlook Data File - <profile name>.PST" is the default (it has the tick next to it), and when I select "<email address> - <profile name>.PST", I cannot make this file the default: the option "Set as Default" is then greyed out.

Furthermore, I notice that all Calendar items belong to the "Outlook Data File - <profile name>.PST" file, despite the fact that incoming email (including invitations) is going to the other PST file.

I have three questions:

1. What makes calendar entries based on invitations going into one PST files to be added to the other PST file?

2. What could possibly be increasing the size of the Outlook Data File, considering that it is not receiving any emails? I tried running SCANPST, but after four hours it was still not done and I needed to close down the machine, so I presume there is something corrupt in that file.

3. Most importantly: is it possible to somehow combine these two PST files in a single file, and get rid of the other one (ideally the one that is double the size of the other)?



Many thanks in anticipation!



Koen

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