Outlook PST Hell

[CougTek]

I'm stuck with an hopeless Outlook case. I don't know where to begin with, so I'll relate the events in chronological order.

First, one customer, for which I did a fresh Windows 7 install a few weeks ago, came back with issues with his Outlook 2002 unable to receive e-mails. I told him it was probably because of an incompatibility between Outlook 2002 and Windows 7, so he should try Outlook 2010 instead. He bought 2010, but asked me to install it and to transfer his old e-mails/calendar/contacts.

First thing I did, which was probably a mistake, was to install Outlook 2010 without previously uninstalling Outlook 2002. The installation went fluently and the old e-mails appeared to be all there. Fun began when I tried to receive new mails. Some e-mails refused to came in. I searched for the PST file in /users/customer_x/appdata/local/Microsoft/Outlook and the fils was very close to the 2GB limit Outlook 2002 had. But this is Outlook 2010, so it should have been fine. To confirm the problem origined from the file size, I (after making a backup of the PST) deleted several things and the missing mails finally came in.

Why oh why the 2GB limit was still there in Outlook 2010? No idea. I thought it was because I installed over the old version 2002, so I tried to restart with a new one. I deleted the PST file in appdata/local/Microsoft/Outlook, but Outlook didn't like it. The program refused to load without me pointing to a PST file. I uninstalled Outlook 2010 and the remains of Office XP before reinstalling only Outlook 2010. Without a PST file in appdata/local/Microsoft/Outlook, it still refused to load. All the informations from the previous installation survived the uninstall/reinstall process. So I redid the uninstallation, then I deleted the Outlook directory in appdata/local/microsoft and the /Office 14 too. I also deleted the Outlook directory in appdata/roaming/Microsoft, just in case. I rebooted the system, reinstalled Outlook 2010 and guess what? Still complained about a missing PST file. Too bad there wasn't a Microsoft employee to strangle next to me by thne, it would have been quite a relief.

I copied (not moved) the backup PST file I had back into appdata/local/Microsoft/Outlook to let the program start. I created a new PST file inside Outlook and I named it "New Outlook". I saved it in /users/customer_x/Documents. There were no "inbox" and "sent items" in the new PST file, so I created directories with the corresponding names. I then transfered all the e-mails ans sub-directories the customer made from the original PST files to the new PST file, from inside Outlook 2010. I closed Outlook, copied the "New Outlook" PST file to the appdata/local/Microsoft/Outlook and renamed it "Outlook" to replace the old file. Outlook again didn't like it and asked for a proper PST file to start. I ran "scanpst.exe" from /Program files(x86)/Outlook on the new outlook PST file and after that, Outlook started with it without complaining. But when I try to send/receive mails, it complains that both the "inbox" and "outbox" folders cannot be accessed. I didn't create the "outbox" directory, so that's partly my fault, but the "inbox" is there.

Also, I forgot to mention that Outlook 2010 constantly crashes at random moments. Often on startup, but sometimes after a few minutes or when accessing a different folder. And during my numerous trials, I told Outlook to work offline. Guess what? It still received new mails. I tried to mod the pop3 server, but it refused to accept a configuration that didn't work. So now I have new messages scathered over three or four copies of the PST files.

My hate for the bastards developping and maintaining Outlook runs deeper than the Mariana Trench. This P.O.S. is the worst evil Microsoft inflicted on us and people behind it should juged for crimes against Humanity and convicted to the same punishment they served to king murderers in the Middle Age.

 

[CougTek]

I thought I posted this in the Tech Support forum. Calice.

 

[Mercutio]

Go to Control Panel > Mail. Go to Data Files. Create a new data file. Make it sure you pick whatever the newest kind of .pst file.

Copy everything into the new file within outlook.

Tell your customer to delete old mail and move old crap to archive files.

 

[MaxBurn]

Yes, upgrading the program doesn't migrate the data to a new database format in Outlook. It wasn't until just last year we switched at work. I still have the old yearly backups and each year is right about 2gb, funny how that worked out.

 

[Will Rickards]

2GB limit? I have a near 5GB archive. This is with outlook 2007. But I'm pretty sure it was created before we upgraded to 2007.

 

[Mercutio]

The problem disappears for data files created in Office 2003, actually.

 

[Chewy509]

From my experience with Outlook.

The PST is not upgraded as part of the running the new version, you need to create a new PST, and import your old one into it.

Did you clean out the Users registry entries for Outlook. That contains a bunch of settings including PST location, POP3/SMTP settings that are not removed during an uninstall procedure. ( HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office )

Not removing that key before running a new version has casued weird issues with Outlook, including random crashes and not being able to download emails, etc.

 

[CougTek]

Thanks Chewy, that's what I was missing. What a shitty uninstaller they have. A proper uninstallation should remove droppings from the registry.

I don't think it'll fix the instability issues though. I'll try all that tonight. Right now, I'm not at the office.

 

[Mercutio]

Fixing almost every normal problem with Outlook comes not from mucking around with the registry, but deleting and recreating a user's Outlook Profile, and/or doing database maintenance on their .PST.

 

[LiamC]

Thanks Chewy, that's what I was missing. What a shitty uninstaller they have. A proper uninstallation should remove droppings from the registry.

I don't think it'll fix the instability issues though. I'll try all that tonight. Right now, I'm not at the office.

I like using Revo Uninstaller to clean up droppings...

 

[CougTek]

Did you clean out the Users registry entries for Outlook. That contains a bunch of settings including PST location, POP3/SMTP settings that are not removed during an uninstall procedure. ( HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office )

I deleted that entry in the registry (as well as everything I could find in appdata refering to Outlook and Office) and it still kept the old information when I reinstalled. It's like a generalized cancer.

Oh and Merc, as I mentioned in the original post, I did create a new PST with the latest format, but I could not use it alone because it did not create the inbox/sent box properly.

I think I'll just format and reinstall the damn system.

 

[CougTek]

I like using Revo Uninstaller to clean up droppings...

And I've just used Revo to uninstall Outlook with the advanced scan to end up with a similar result as all my other trials. I give up.

Outlook 2010 is a software cancer.

 

[ddrueding]

So glad I don't have any users on Outlook anymore.

 

[Handruin]

So glad I don't have any users on Outlook anymore.

I can certainly appreciate the problems people have with outlook, but I do have to wonder, is it more related to inexperience with a highly complex product that cause you guys so many problems? I've been an end-user of Outlook at my job for over 10 years now and I've never had any of the problems I've seen you guys post over the years. Now I fully realize that these things may occur, but how is it that me and my numerous coworkers never seem to bitch/complain about Outlook over the years? I use Outlook because I have to, but at the same time, it does work, and we must have a massive setup given the number of employees.

 

[ddrueding]

Microsoft has typically been very good at making things appear easy and clean to the users. They have also been good at making things appear clean on the admin side. However, by making things appear clean and easy on the admin side, they have essentially hidden the nuts and bolts; making it difficult or near impossible to fix something once the tools provided no longer directly address what is wrong.

 

[CougTek]

I admit I don't have a tremendous experience with Outlook and that if I had saved the old PST, then uninstalled Outlook 2002, then installed Outlook 2010 and then import the old PST file, I might not have had any issue. Might.

But there's no way you'll tell me that it's normal that a program's settings cannot be removed by either the official uninstaller, revo uninstaller and manual cleanup of both the /appData folder and the registry. It's ok if a program installation doesn't succeed the first time, but it's not that it prevents you from fixit it every time you try to reinstall it. That's just shitty programming and shittier thinking from the development team.

 

[Mercutio]

I can certainly appreciate the problems people have with outlook, but I do have to wonder, is it more related to inexperience with a highly complex product that cause you guys so many problems?

I have metric shitloads of experience fixing Outlook. From my perspective as an Admin/Tech, Outlook causes more problems than it solves. There's value in being able to set up a user profile in such a way that it already includes E-mail configuration and I won't dispute that, but I've fixed too much Outlook crap that would never have been a problem with anything else to be anything but offended when people choose to use it. It's bad software.

 

[CougTek]

I ended up doing a fresh install on another drive, then installing Outlook 2010 and creating a new PST. I plug the orginal drive as a secondary drive and I imported all the PST I could find. That made one fat PST with the newer format with all the data into it. I copied that PST back on the original installation and voilà, the trick was done.

Could not have been simpler.:hurl:

 

[Handruin]

I admit I don't have a tremendous experience with Outlook and that if I had saved the old PST, then uninstalled Outlook 2002, then installed Outlook 2010 and then import the old PST file, I might not have had any issue. Might.

But there's no way you'll tell me that it's normal that a program's settings cannot be removed by either the official uninstaller, revo uninstaller and manual cleanup of both the /appData folder and the registry. It's ok if a program installation doesn't succeed the first time, but it's not that it prevents you from fixit it every time you try to reinstall it. That's just shitty programming and shittier thinking from the development team.

No, you're right, I'm not saying that. A program should uninstall itself completely. Microsoft and outlook are not the only culprits to this problem.

I have metric shitloads of experience fixing Outlook. From my perspective as an Admin/Tech, Outlook causes more problems than it solves. There's value in being able to set up a user profile in such a way that it already includes E-mail configuration and I won't dispute that, but I've fixed too much Outlook crap that would never have been a problem with anything else to be anything but offended when people choose to use it. It's bad software.

Just as you worded it, you have experience fixing outlook, but what about the experience in deploying it properly such that it doesn't always need fixing? Or more to the matter, the people you're cleaning up after need to learn how to deploy/configure it properly to avoid having you to clean it up. No software should be that much of a pain, I agree, but there is still the element of user knowledge in configuring and deploying a highly complicated piece of software. If Outlook causes more problems than it solves, why would people continue to use it? Exchange certainly isn't inexpensive and nor is the hardware requirements to make it run well.

 

[time]

Microsoft may not be the only culprit but they are by far the main one.

Are you trying to say that companies buy products because they are the best available? :rofl:

 

[Handruin]

Microsoft may not be the only culprit but they are by far the main one.

Are you trying to say that companies buy products because they are the best available? :rofl:

Because they sell a lot of software, or because every piece of software does not uninstall?

No of course not, but if it's so terrible, why is it still around?

 

[timwhit]

Because they sell a lot of software, or because every piece of software does not uninstall?

No of course not, but if it's so terrible, why is it still around?

Because, AD/Exchange is easy to administer. If you tried to get your average Windows Sysadmin to learn how to administer OpenLDAP and a Linux mail server they would quit.

 

[ddrueding]

The average windows sysadmin will blow away a workstation as soon as they hit any kind of snag. That is because the MS way provides fixes for 1st tier glitches, and as soon as you get past that you are SOL.

The exception to this rule is MS' actual support people. You get absolute friggin' magic for your $300 phone call. I've seen them run commands that returned nothing on Google and rebuild files by hand.

 

[Mercutio]

The average windows sysadmin will blow away a workstation as soon as they hit any kind of snag. That is because the MS way provides fixes for 1st tier glitches, and as soon as you get past that you are SOL.

That's the Windows support way. It's disposable, so just start over.

In the case out MS Outlook, part of the problem is complexity, but the standard fixes amount to 1. Save the .pst 2. Delete the Outlook Profile 3. Re-create the profile and change all the user's settings back to what they were. Or if the .pst is the problem, either run maintenance utilities on it or create a new one and try to save as much from the old one as possible.

I can go in to all kinds of details about what part of Outlook's configuration is stored where if you really care, but the thing is, nothing that Outlook is doing should really be THAT complicated. Other e-mail programs aren't that complicated. Other PIMs aren't that complicated. But only Outlook has all the issues that Outlook has.

Just "Configuring Outlook Properly" doesn't actually fix anything, because eventually Outlook will break all on its own, and it will have to be fixed.

Which usually means cheerily singing "fdisk format reinstall, doo dah, doo dah" while hoping that doing so will take care of it.

Truthfully, the same complaint applies to Exchange. Something breaks and there's a not insignificant chance that the best way to fix it is to reinstall something, but Exchange depends on A LOT of stuff working properly. So you can get into cascading dependency failures where, because .NET 3.5 failed to update, IIS is partially hosed and because IIS is partially hosed, Exchange is totally hosed. And that's a simple example.

And in the environments where I work, I don't have racks full of machines that are all doing Exchange. I'm dealing with one machine that still needs to send and receive E-mail if possible while I'm fixing it. Exchange winds up being a trap that eats up far too much of my time as an IT guy. Maybe it's better when there are racks and racks (or VMs and VMs, I suppose) of Exchange machines, but on the level where I see it, it sucks and I don't want anything to do with it if I can help it.

 

[Handruin]

Just "Configuring Outlook Properly" doesn't actually fix anything, because eventually Outlook will break all on its own, and it will have to be fixed.

You're right, it wouldn't fix anything, it would allow the application to run correctly without problems.

Ok, so why in over 10 years has Outlook not broken all on its own (or by my own doing)? AM I just that lucky? I've run multiple versions on several machines and even done upgrades and patches during this time. I've done nothing to backup or maintain PST files in all this time. The only people that bitch about Outlook at my work are 50 year old Unix people who have long beards tied back in a pony tail.

And in the environments where I work, I don't have racks full of machines that are all doing Exchange. I'm dealing with one machine that still needs to send and receive E-mail if possible while I'm fixing it. Exchange winds up being a trap that eats up far too much of my time as an IT guy. Maybe it's better when there are racks and racks (or VMs and VMs, I suppose) of Exchange machines, but on the level where I see it, it sucks and I don't want anything to do with it if I can help it.

Of course that would suck, you have no redundancy for your mail server. Why can't you change from Exchange to something else if it's wasting so much of your time?

 

[time]

The original post referred to Outlook in it's standalone POP3 client guise.

It completely sucks at this, which was the basis for the post and the follow-up posts.

It's main purpose in life is to be the client for MS Exchange. Problems here are more likely to lie with Exchange rather than any local PST file.

I will say that MS Exchange is better than whatever IBM Lotus Notes turned into (I refuse to look it up). But that would be about it, from a 'power user' perspective. It sounds like a typical Microsoft craptacular that is at least 10 times more complex than it needs to be, about one tenth as effective as it could be, and completely indecipherable if the shit hits the fan. Although if you do a clean install and never attempt to use any of its 'features', it's apparently easy as pie to administer, and obviously you can send and receive emails.

I'm inclined to believe that Mercutio really does have "metric shitloads of experience" with one hand up Outlook/Exchange's ass (veterinary analogy). I also believe that many companies have found solace in GMail and other alternatives.

If you want to challenge those beliefs, you would need to present some solid expertise. Perhaps a car analogy is in order: You can check the oil and top up the radiator, but when it breaks you need a mechanic. Mechanics develop likes and dislikes with regard to brands and models, and sometimes they're worth listening to.

 

[Handruin]

I'm inclined to believe that Mercutio really does have "metric shitloads of experience" with one hand up Outlook/Exchange's ass (veterinary analogy). I also believe that many companies have found solace in GMail and other alternatives.

If you want to challenge those beliefs, you would need to present some solid expertise. Perhaps a car analogy is in order: You can check the oil and top up the radiator, but when it breaks you need a mechanic. Mechanics develop likes and dislikes with regard to brands and models, and sometimes they're worth listening to.

I can't say if he does or doesn't have experience, I only go by what he tells us and so far I've not seen these crazy problems in my years of using the same software. Since I'm not an administrator and I self-proclaim to have "metric shitloads of experience", then I guess my data is not worth anything and I have to provide some kind of solid expertise, yet the originator and his claim doesn't since it's self-proclaimed? :roll: I'm sure he's solving major problems, but my original statement was that maybe these problems are due to inexperience with a complicated piece of software? That doesn't excuse the software, it's just a question of knowing the right/best way to implement it so you don't have these problems. I'm not claiming I know the right way, but rather someone in my company must have figured it out because we don't see a fraction of these issues from the end-user perspective. Perhaps Exchange is a nightmare, but they certainly do a good job of hiding it from us.

Your car analogy assumes mechanics always know what they're doing when in reality it's hard to find one you trust and isn't shady (or a hack at making things work). Are you saying I should apply that logic to Mercutio? We all develop likes and dislikes no doubt and you're assuming he is an expert in this area. He may very well be, but he seems to have a lot of problems to manage with this product and only offers to complain about it...yet continues to use it/service it.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't have time for a full reply but I'd like to say a couple things:

1. I'm not suggesting that your experience with Outlook is invalid, Handy, but I presume that your employer has a staff, possibly a small army, of people whose job it is to insure that E-mail conforms to expectations in a way that's essentially invisible to end users.

2. Outlook is part of Microsoft Office. And just like everything else in MS Office, sometimes people want it to do stupid, ridiculous things because it's the tool that they know how to use, even though there's another tool that can do the same job much, much better (e.g. someone implements a spreadsheet in Word, or a database in Excel) and this tendency is part of what makes Outlook so nightmarish.

3. time is right that Exchange/Outlook is a different product from Outlook on its own. The people I work with don't even understand that, and they're certified as Master-level Microsoft Office instructors. Exchange/Outlook really just moves some of the burden for breaking crap on to Exchange so that some of the potential ugliness is centralized rather than spread out to the client, but there's still ugliness for some things, especially when something breaks or for dealing with certain issues like mail filtering. The biggest problem is tha Exchange/Outlook offers features that are just not available any other way, which makes it very difficult to get rid of once it's in an organization.

4. Handruin, you're looking at it as an end user. If you're dealing with it as an admin or a tech, it's a totally different perspective.

 

[timwhit]

My anecdotal experience from my company is that many people have client problems with Outlook. We use it with an Exchange server. Generally they get their machines wiped and everything reinstalled when Outlook problems happen. One of my coworkers currently can't use Outlook and has been using OWA for the past week because our help desk can't figure out what's wrong.

 

[LunarMist]

I have basically the same PST for about 8 years. I've fixed it a few times and updated it also, and I keep a few extra copies just in case.

 

[Howell]

FWIW, I have installed and supported over 50 seperate exchange/outlook installations with a maximum outlook user count of ~200. In 10 years I can count the number of problems I've had with exchange that required googling something on both hands, half of those required a call to MS. Every problem that required a call to MS was as a result of something drastic happening to the system. Either it ran out of space, became inundated by spam or the damn anti-virus mail software lost the plot after it had it's hooks in. All problems were server side. Outlook problems have only been related to Outlook add-ins or old psts with the 2 G limitation.

It just runs.

 

[ddrueding]

You never hit the space limits on the Exchange store itself? I haven't run an Exchange server since Exchange 2003, but the limits were draconian in 200 user environments compared to Google.

 

[Howell]

I never had a problem that a back-end mail archiver did not solve. Probably because I had common sense limits on email size.

 

[BingBangBop]

I've used Outlook without Exchange for a very long time with absolutely no problems. I've heard the evils of Outlook since it was brand new but I've not experianced those evils. I will note that when the pst file gets very big (>2GB) Outlook will slow down to a crawl. I have kept every email I've ever gotten so yes it has gotten very large. When I notice a slowdown now I simply archived that which was quite old and then compress and problem solved.

I choose Outlook as my primary E-Mail client mainly because of the pst and pab files. I find it very appealing to be able to backup everything by just being able to copy two files. Everything else that I saw needed to backup an entire directory structure.

 

[Mercutio]

Things that are not Outlook most often store E-mail as plain text. Plain text that is easy to re-format if need be, which can be directly imported into other non-retarded clients and which can be recovered quite easily if some portion of the file gets munched for some reason. What good does putting everything in what is effectively an Access database do?

 

[Mercutio]

FWIW, I have installed and supported over 50 seperate exchange/outlook installations with a maximum outlook user count of ~200. In 10 years I can count the number of problems I've had with exchange that required googling something on both hands, half of those required a call to MS.

One of the great frustrations I have is that everything in the world of Exchange costs a ton of money, especially antispam solutions. It was easier and more efficient for me to get a cheap computer with Linux and Spamassassin and route mail through that than to get a worthwhile mail filter for Exchange. I almost never touch it any more, thankfully, and the largest installations I did have to deal with were on the order of ~50 users, but even at that, I probably had to deal with some kind of pant-shitting weekend-without-sleep Exchange terror at least once a year because something either quit working, a database shit itself or because an update to an unrelated component of IIS or something screwed up OWA/Activesync. And ultimately, it's always been Exchange that's been the problem child, not MSSQL or IIS or anything else that I'd call part of the Microsoft Server ecosystem.

In contrast, I have a couple Linux mail servers out in the world that I've only really had to touch to update mail filters. Those guys just run.

 

[LunarMist]

I've used Outlook without Exchange for a very long time with absolutely no problems. I've heard the evils of Outlook since it was brand new but I've not experianced those evils. I will note that when the pst file gets very big (>2GB) Outlook will slow down to a crawl.

I put them on an SSD and it definitely helps.

 

[time]

I will note that when the pst file gets very big (>2GB) Outlook will slow down to a crawl.

For what it's worth, I've seen Thunderbird installs with 20GB of email (stored in plain text as Mercutio said), and even on low-end hardware it's still just fine.

In fact, I know of a site where one user uses Outlook 2003 and tries to keep his file to around 2GB, and another with Thunderbird who just lets it all hang out with 15GB. They're both on 6-year old hardware with 512MB RAM. The Thunderbird user has no problems, but the Outlook user moans that his email is unusable.

 

[Mercutio]

My mail spool is probably pretty close to 20GB. I leave everything in my inbox. The mail clients I choose to use don't have a problem with that.

Thunderbird is not perfect. Every so often it will re-set my read mail count and I'll get weird duplicate messages in my inbox, but there's an addon I can run that clears them out. Thunderbird is also not that great at whole-message searching for some reason.

There's also an addon to sync my Gmail contacts with my desktop machine. I've never bothered with address books before since I don't have a problem remembering email addresses or phone numbers, but since it's so simple to sync and I can add stuff like mailing addresses and see those changes everyplace, I'm more motivated to actually do it.

 

[ddrueding]

My mail store is only about 5GB, but since it is on Google it makes no difference whatsoever. The search feature is so useful and so fast that I don't bother sorting anything anymore.