Troubleshooter--Compacting .pst Files

When users delete items from a Personal Folders (.pst) file, they can manually compact the file. Can I compact .pst files from the command line so that I can schedule the task to occur automatically?

—Jacky Green

I'm not aware of any way to compact .pst files from the command line. Compacting a .pst file rewrites the file and removes messages that Outlook has marked as deleted. Because .pst files store two copies of each message (one as plaintext, one as Rich Text Format—RTF), compacting these files can result in significant space savings, so it's worth teaching your users how to do it themselves. In Outlook 2002, go to File, Data File Management to open a dialog box that lists all your .pst files. Select the file you want to compress, click Settings, then click Compact Now to actually perform the compression. Outlook automatically compacts a .pst file when the file reaches a certain (but undocumented) size; however, for automatic compaction to occur, your PC must be completely idle.