Joe Mills wrote:

I'm using Outlook 2003 and connecting to around 10 different email
accounts on my mail server using IMAP. Each accounts is over 1GB in
size and I have quite a few message rules running on Outlook to
direct email to specified folders. My problem is that Outlook is
really starting to slow down now and often hangs for a while while
processing is done. I think the next stage may be to archive come of
my older my email (i'm holding around 3 years worth). Can anyone
recommend the best way of archiving the email of any other ways to
improve performance?

In addition to Oliver's sugestions, you may consider attacking this from the
server side. IMAP messages stay on the server and the contents of those
mailboxes are only reflected in the PSTs. With IMAP, the PSTs in Outlook
often don't contain a whole lot because Outlook doesn't download the
contents of folders you don't open, so if you have folders that you don't
visit, they shouldn't contain any data. So, perhaps the issue is the amount
of space on the server. If there is a way of accessing the server to
manipulate the mailbox (telnet, for example), you may be able to use server
tools to trim the data from the mailbox and keep it in another form on the
server so that it doesn't appear in the mailbox, yet remains accessible.
--
Brian Tillman