[maratonic]

Ok, so I had a computer crash while I was exporting my mailbox .pst file from Outlook 2003. When I restarted and Outlook had checked the .pst file (like Outlook does when it wasn't shut down properly the last time) it starts fetching every mail that is on the mail server. Which is a few gigabytes...so I cancel the send/receive to not get doubles of everything. Apparently Outlook has lost the information about which emails it has already fetched.
My big question: Is there a way to tell Outlook that everything in the .pst file is already fetched or something? I want to prevent Outlook from fetching all mail before yesterday (=all messages that are already in my .pst). Alternatively, all mail before now.
Or is this informaion stored on the mail server? (But then the information would not have been lost while working on the .pst file, right?)



What workarounds I've tried and failed so far:

1. Creating a TEMP pst file and fetch everything into that
Computer crashed during the process (at about 50 000 out of 66 000 messages). I get these crashes from time to time, the computer just turns off the power (like pulling the plug). Come to think of it, maybe it's always while I'm trying to get Outlook to do some big memory-consuming operation on a big .pst file...? Something to do with memory management in combination with how my specific hardware behaves perhaps. Anyway, let's no go there, I'm getting a new computer soon and only need to be able to start working with my mailbox again. (Of course, if you know of some simple tweak in Outlook, Windows or BIOS that I can do to get rid of this then you're welcome! :-)


2. Deleting messages from mail server using IMAP
So, apparently Outlook can't handle mailboxes as big as mine. But for some reason I can't delete messages with my IMAP account in Outlook. I mark a big bunch of messages for deletion and ask Outlook to process marked messages in the folder, but they don't go away. Maybe too much for the mail server to handle in one request, one might think. So one thinks that one should delete fewer at a time. But when I want to undelete the messages they don't look undeleted in the view. Only when I click on a message header in the list does the strikethrough markup disappear. When I ask Outlook to process marked messages again, the same thing hapens as before: nothing.


3. Deleting messages using the webmail
Our webmail has a basic interface and an advanced interface. The basic one displays 20 messages per page, over 2500 pages. It is not an option to scroll through them erasing 20 messages at a time. The advanced interface is an IMAP clientand it doesn't even load. Tech support says it's because the mailbox is too big.


Conclusions:
My mailbox is too big to be able to fetch it (POP), my computer pulls the plug on itself when Outlook hits some memory limit. It does the same when Outlook tries any other operation on a big .pst file so import/export operations don't work. IMAP and webmail doesn't work.


Last resort
Would be to POP down my mailbox from another computer maybe and move it back to my own? Tedious...hope someone knows of a way to make Outlook ignore the messages that are already in the .pst.

Greatful for any tips!

/Fredrik

[TerryNet]

Our webmail has a basic interface and an advanced interface. The basic one displays 20 messages per page, over 2500 pages. It is not an option to scroll through them erasing 20 messages at a time.

I was about to post the opinion that might be your only option, but I found something that you at least could check into.

I logged into my webmail with my ISP and discovered that I have an "E-mail Deletion Management" option--see attached. If you have something like that you could set it to delete unread and/or read mail after a day or three.

Or maybe you could persuade tech support to delete all your messages older than X days--they should be happy to get the space back.