Tweaking Outlook

Tweaking Outlook
You rely on Microsoft Outlook for everything
from e-mailing to tracking your schedules
to assigning tasks to your team members.
However, there are times when the
application responds in a very sluggish
manner. How can you move the mail
Outlook file to a different directory or hard
disk, to make it easier to take backups
of it?

=> Outlook, being the multi-faceted
application it is, lets you do plenty of tasks
for the home and office. However, in this
age of bloated attachments and relentless
e-mail forwards, it doesn’t take too long
for your mailbox to swell up to hundreds
of megabytes. There are several ways
to counter this and to help keep it slim
and trim.
First, you can compress your mailbox
(and all attached files along with it). To
do this, select Tools | Options and choose
the ‘Mail Setup’ tab. Now click the ‘Data
files’ button and select ‘Settings’ from
the following screen. You’ll see a button
here called ‘Compact’. Clicking this will
enable Outlook to compress the data fi le
that is used to hold all your e-mails, tasks,
calendar entries etc.
The default location of the mail Outlook
PST storehouse file is within a long-winded
folder structure in a hidden location. Since
this is a critical data file, you would want it
to be in an accessible location from where
you can back it up easily. Therefore, it’s
best to move it from its initial location.
First you need to locate the ‘Outlook.
PST’ file. From the menu bar, click on‘Tools’, then select ‘Options’ and click the
‘Data files’ button. Now click the ‘Open
Folder’ button. A new window will open,
containing the main outlook file. Copy this
path to this file from the address bar. Now
close Outlook and navigate to this file using
the path you saved. Cut the file from this
location and paste it to the new location
in an accessible folder. Now, the next time
you start Outlook, it will throw up an error
box since the file will not be found. Simply
navigate to the new location, select the file
and click [OK]. That’s it, from now, Outlook
will access the file from the new location.
You are now free to take backups of that
file from its new location.