The smartest, most effective solutions for Importing, Exporting and Recovering all of your Outlook mail data.

Can Recovery Wizard repair 2GB pst files of the old Outlook format?

We describe the possibility of repairing 2GB pst files (oversized pst files) with Recovery Wizard utility by converting pst files of the old Outlook format to the new Unicode pst format.

Yes, Recovery Wizard can indeed repair 2GB pst files of the old Outlook format. We’ll make a few comments to explain.
Microsoft Outlook Versions 97-2002 limit the size of personal folder files (.pst) and offline folder files (.ost) to two gigabytes of disk space. If a new or changed item increases the file size to more than 2GB, then it becomes impossible to use the so-called oversized pst or ost file. This problem is called the 2GB pst file problem.

Beginning with Outlook 2003, the program supports pst files of 2GB and larger. This became possible thanks to the implementation of Unicode formatting in pst files. However, moving to a modern version of Outlook is necessary in order to create a new pst file, since a method for converting, updating, or transferring data from old Outlook 97-2002 personal folder files is not provided. This, as well as the problem of oversized pst files, is very easy to solve with the help of pst conversion using Outlook Recovery Wizard.

Using Outlook Recovery Wizard to Repair 2GB Pst Files and Convert Pst Files to the Outlook 2003 Format

In fact, fixing a pst file — an oversized pst file — also amounts to converting the pst file to Unicode format. Start Outlook Recovery Wizard and perform the following steps:

  1. Using the dialog, in the “Source PST file” field specify a personal folder file to be processed. It can be either an oversized 2GB pst file or a usable pst file of the old format, which must be converted for use in MS Outlook 2003-2010.

    Important: Before you recover or convert a pst file don’t forget to make a backup.

  2. By default, the fixed pst file is stored in the same directory as the original pst with the file name mask “repaired-[name of the source pst file].pst”. To change the location, use the Browse dialog.
  3. Following all the steps of the wizard, you will repair the 2GB pst file. As a result of fixing/converting the pst file all data (e-mails, contacts, etc.) are moved to the Unicode pst file. To start, it will need to be connected to MS Outlook.