Topic: Outlook backup software

[gbentley]

Can anyone recommend any win software to backup Outlook data to a users HDD folder?

One of the criteria is as follows ;

The backup software must make it easy to browse through past email / folder and
restore an individual email from the archive.

I know Outlook has the archive feature. We are going back to 2007 though so want
something a bit more structured than a single huge .pst

Thanks!

[CharlieBrady]

I'd say don't use .pst files and do use IMAP folders.

[gbentley]

I have some users using IMAP but we are concerned that important emails arent being filled with job numbers in the appropriate folder. In one case the amount of data amounts to about 1.6GB and thousands of msgs.

This is a follow on from my question about quotas i.e. how to get staff to file the relevent emails into job folders rather than it sitting either in their outlook / in an IMAP folder for years and ending up a big headache to back it up?

Emails are supposed to be stored in the ibays / year / jobno folder but good filemanagment seems to be lacking in some cases.

[yythoss]

Take a look for this Software. For one account it is free.

http://www.mailstore.com/en/

yythoss

[idp_qbn]

You have an even bigger problem looming. Outllook (up to at least 2003, don't know about 2007) has a 2Gb limit for its .pst file. Stops working after that.
I "solved" the problem for several users by making a copy of the .pst, naming it Archive 2003-2008.pst, then deleting everything in the current .pst pre-2009.
AND (very important) compacting the .pst file, to purge the deleted items. Don't miss this step.

Outlook allows you to open secondary .pst files as well as the current one, and gets around the 2Gb barrier.

However, this is just a hack to get them out of trouble. It does not solve the problem of users not filing important documents....and deleting the emails.
On a 100MHz network, a 2Gb .pst file takes a long time to open, which gets the users complaining about a slow network.

As a general observation based on a small sample, most of the bulk of .pst files is often photos, multiple copies of old documents, round-robin thingies (the pass-this-on-to-ten-friends things with pictures and music) and so on.

Good luck with solving your problem - and the user education program you need to run.
Ian

[Stefano]

On a 100MHz network

I guess you mean 100Mbit

, a 2Gb .pst file takes a long time to open, which gets the users complaining about a slow network.

pay attention.. pst on network share is not a good idea.. they suffer of data corruption

[Paspv]

I have some users using IMAP but we are concerned that important emails arent being filled with job numbers in the appropriate folder. In one case the amount of data amounts to about 1.6GB and thousands of msgs.
...

You're talking about job numbers in emails. Is it mail between different companies about a project or is it mail generated by a program? There are a lot of programs which send mails for different events and that are easily hundreds of mails. Is it possible to use a database for these messages? Databases are made for storing, mailprograms like outlook absolutely not.

[gbentley]

Theres ibays as years/clients/jobs and under jobs is drwngs/emails/pics and under drwngs is revision numbers

when an email comes in about a job they are supposed to file save as into the correct years/clients/jobs/emails folder

some end up on the desktop others languish in outlook some are setup pop other imap for the remote users who are prolly worse culprits

plan is to get everyone under say 50MB then set quotas but prob is getting them there in first palce....

[Paspv]

I see what you mean, drawings can be large files compared to Word or Excel. The biggest problem is with the users, they need to archive the mail in the correct folder. If you put a quota on the (IMAP?) mailbox they don't have another option than archiving it, otherwise they can't use mail anymore. If they have a local mailbox they won't get triggered to do that. So I would go for the mail quota option. But prepare for a big struggle with the users.

I don't know of any Outlook backup software you've described. And a single pst is certainly not the best there is. You have the file size limitations and you won't be the first (and last) with a corrupt archive.

We are working with IMAP and Thunderbird which works great. Outlook and IMAP is not so well because Outlook will store the sent items in a local pst instead of the IMAP sent folder. There are some other little "problems" but this one was the showstopper for us.

[Stefano]

I think that a procmail script colud solve part of the problem.. anyway, it's not trivial

[pherder]

You have an even bigger problem looming. Outlook (up to at least 2003, don't know about 2007) has a 2Gb limit for its .pst file. Stops working after that.
{snipped}

FYI, Prior to Outlook 2003 has the 2GB limit (i.e. Outlook 2000 and earlier, I don't know about Outlook 2002 since it was never in our environment).  2003 and newer is much bigger (don't know limit, yet) with some of my users have 8-10 GB of crap, err I mean stored messages in their locally stored PSTs.  (one user does not delete ANY of his messages to include his "deleted" messages. 

Paul

[idp_qbn]

You could be right - I just checked. The ones I was having trouble with were Office 2002 and Office XP. So I should have said "Office pre-2003".

If you have a correctly configured and reliable network, .pst on the file server should be OK - but then again.........

This still does not give a technical solution, does it? Your real problem still remains a matter of user education.
Lock their accounts! Ok, maybe a bit harsh----use quotas, and force them to clean up.

Cheers
Ian

[idp_qbn]

Gbentley,
In your case, quotas may not help - so you need to enforce your storage rules by user education (coercion).
Large PST files over a network are still slow to load - and slower the bigger they get - leading to complaints from users used to instant gratification.

pherder:
You are correct> See http://email.about.com/od/outlook/f/pst_size_limit.htm

Ian

[Stefano]

in my experience pst's limit size persist also with Outlook 2003 > if you use imap

no limitation if you use pop3

[CharlieBrady]

Large PST files over a network are still slow to load ...

Large PST files are a reliability problem wherever they are. dovecot IMAP OTOH is extremely reliable.