Thanks, Brian. But when I tried to drag a folder (~174MB) into an archives
folder (1.8GB), I get a message that tells me that it cannot move item .
"Archive folder reached its maximum size." It then tells me I should
consider using the new Outlook personal folders (,pst) introduced with
Outlook 2003 that provides greater capacity.

The files I'm trying to move probably were created when I had Outlook 2000.
But I'm way below 20GB total.

Bob


"Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]" wrote in message
...
"Bob Griendling" wrote in message
...

Over the last couple of years I have been working from both a desktop and
a laptop computer when travelling (both running XP but with Outlook 2007
and 2003, respectively; but I'm told that shouldn't have any impact as
they use the same type of .pst file system). I have copied outlook,pst
files from one to another to ensure I'm always working with a current
file.

However, during those years, I have not always understood how to manage
that process. Fortunately, I've always saved the old .pst file in case I
screw something up.

Well, I have screwed something up. My current archive.pst file has only
recent files in it. My plan was to merge all my archived messages into
the one archive.pst file, obviously so all my archived files are in the
same place.

What is the best way to do that? I've tested moving a folder from one
.pst file to another and it was a very slow process, about 15 minutes for
a folder with a couple of thousand messages in it. And I have several
dozen folders, though not with that many messages in them.

The best way is simply to open them and drag the data from one to the
other. You can also use Import, but you'll change the data that way.

I've read that .pst files should never be more than 2GB. Does that still
hold true for 2007?

The default maximum size for PSTs created by Outlook 2003 and later is
20GB, but registry keys can increase that limit. The actual maximum is in
the terabyte range.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]