That’s another reason why Outlook for Mac uses up so much disk space. Now you’ve identified the Outlook for Mac data folders, you can compress them. HFS+ Compression with Outlook 2016 for Mac. Our tests of HFS+ compression saved 9GB of disk space from 20GB of Outlook data – a whopping 47% improvement.
Update Feb 2015: Are you using Outlook 2015 for OS X? Read the note at the bottom. I’m a Mac user. And Outlook for Mac makes me sad. That’s because, when compared to its Windows counterpart, Outlook for OS X (aka Outlook 2011) is an underperformer.
Maybe it’s because the Windows version was built in the same shop as the Exchange service. Or maybe Microsoft has an understandable bias to Windows. Regardless, us Apple lovers pay the price. In fact, Microsoft’s own knowledge base says that Mac users may see performance issues if they receive as few as. Some of the difference can be attributed to how each client connects to the Exchange server. I’m going to explain this.
And, if you’re having Outlook OS X performance issues (if it freezes, crashes, or forces you to rebuild your Microsoft User identity), I’m going to offer some tips for getting Outlook 2011 performing at a higher level. Outlook connection methods: Windows vs. OS X Most Windows users connect to Exchange via RPC/HTTP(s), aka Outlook Anywhere. This proprietary protocol was made specifically for Outlook for Windows and the Exchange server. Its main advantage is that the complexity of the connection is a lot lower. Fewer moving parts means sturdier and faster connection. There’s another protocol for connecting to Exchange servers: EWS (Exchange Web Services).
![How to compress outlook for mac as default mail client How to compress outlook for mac as default mail client](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125602322/638434699.png)
This one is built around Web Services, which allows most platforms to build clients to utilize it. OS X cannot use RPC/HTTP(s), so Outlook for OS X uses EWS, which is the best available method. EWS is more complex than RPC/HTTP(s). There are more moving parts required to make the connection smooth.
It requires more overhead. And it’s slower. If you’re a Mac user, you probably know this all too well. How to optimize Outlook for OS X Once you have a sense of the underlying protocol differences, you might think the situation is dire. But as a Mac user, there are things you can do to make things easier for you. There are two categories I am going to concentrate on: mailbox size and disk health. Mailbox size: Outlook optimization category #1 With Outlook for OS X, we’ve seen a direct relationship between mailbox size and client performance: the larger the mailbox grows, the more Outlook’s performance will suffer.
It often comes to the point where your data gets corrupted and needs to be entirely rebuilt. So, of the two optimization categories, mailbox size is far more impactful. It’s especially valuable if you’re a power user or you have a fairly large mailbox. Set a shorter mail retention policy. Outlook for OS X doesn’t like big mailboxes. So set a policy to delete messages that are, say, 90 or 180 or 360 days old.
This will keep Outlook lighter and, thus, speedier. (The downside, of course, is that you lose all your old messages). If you’re an Intermedia customer, here’s guidance on. Archive your mail without deleting it. EWS clients such as Outlook for Mac tend to communicate a lot more with the server because the connection type is not as efficient as their Window’s kin. The smaller the mailbox, the easier the communication.
If you set up an email archiving policy on your sent or deleted items, you can remove your mail from the Exchange server, but keep it accessible on your local hard drive. This improves Outlook performance because it has fewer items to sync with the server. Please note: this is not the same thing as. If neither of these options work for you, we have a few more tips in our in our Knowledge Base. But the two tips above are by far the most effective for reducing mailbox size and thus making Outlook more stable. Disk Health: Outlook optimization category #2 Outlook for OS X loves to use your hard drive. Not only does it store all your mailbox data on your computer, but it also relies heavily on hard drive operations to review all the objects in your mailbox and confirm that they match the server.
In addition, it reads your disk and verifies with the Exchange server every time you touch an object in your mailbox. Because of this, your Mac’s disk health has a big impact on Outlook performance. So here are a few tips.
Free up some space. Your hard drive will perform better when it has fewer items to sort through. In fact, disk performance tends to degrade significantly around 80% capacity. Here’s some guidance from Apple on. If you want to see how much space you have, use the Disk Utility (located in Applications Utilities). Upgrade to flash memory. Newer Macs use flash memory, which offers the latest and greatest in disk performance.
If your hard drive is the cause of hardware performance problems, consider upgrading to a new machine with flash memory. Switch to OWA. If all else fails, give up on Outlook and start using the Outlook Web App (OWA). If you’re running Exchange 2013, OWA contains all of the features as the desktop version of Outlook—but, because it’s web-based, doesn’t have any performance issues. It even has an offline mode!
If you’re an Intermedia customer,. Update for Outlook 2015 (Added February, 2015) So the version of Outlook for Mac—Outlook 2015— is here. The big question: will it perform better than Outlook 2011?
The jury is still out. However, I can tell you this: Outlook 2015 is still using the Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol. This means it is still not as robust as Outlook for Windows. Microsoft does claim there is a performance improvement, mainly based off database improvements that they’ve made. Instead of their old proprietary format, Outlook 2015 is using SQLite, which is a quicker and more compact database engine. Its source code is public domain, which means Microsoft has the rights to tweak in ways that optimize it for Outlook. Another exciting update is that Microsoft claims to have removed the latency between e-mail delivery caused by EWS.
This is in part due to the fact that Outlook 2015 will have push e-mail delivery, which allows it deliver emails instantly, similar to how Facebook message notifications appear the moment the message is received. Here’s the good news: you can try it for yourself. Outlook 2015 can run side-by-side with Outlook 2011, so you can give it a test drive without fully committing to it. Want to talk to us about Outlook for OS X?
If you’re an Intermedia customer, we’d be happy to talk to you about any Outlook performance issues you might be having. Call us at (800) 379-7729. If you’re not an Intermedia customer, learn more about —which, by the way, is extremely Mac-friendly.
Ask us about free expert migration and a 30-day risk-free trial.
Microsoft Outlook is the most used email client all over the world. It has awesome features and an easy GUI makes it a first choice for the individual as well as organizations. It contains Emails, Tasks, Contacts, Notes, and Appointments, and as well as file attachments. Eventually, as you save and store more and more files within Outlook, your PST file can develop to a quite huge size especially when there are heavy file attachments So your Outlook data takes up the most space on your computer’s hard drive.
And unfortunately, large outlook files lead to various unwanted errors and corruption issues. Furthermore, a large outlook file can also make Outlook take longer to start-up, search, navigate, and shut-down For reducing the size of Outlook PST file, users have to delete the unwanted items from each folder, but it moves to the Deleted Items folder, which is in the same file. So in order to delete your PST file permanently you must delete the items from the Deleted Items. Attachments with email messages are also one of the main reason for increasing PST file size. It is always annoying when PST file size reaches its threshold limit as those large PST files deteriorate the efficiency of MS Outlook. In this article, I am going to share an easy and effective method to compress large PST files.
You can compress the PST file using Mailbox Cleanup tool which is already available in MS Outlook. Procedures to compact a PST file using Mailbox Cleanup tool. Open your MS Outlook. Go to the Tools. Select Mailbox Cleanup, a dialogue box will appear. Click on the “ View Mailbox Size”.This will give you the idea of the usage of different sections of your mailbox with their size. Choose Auto Archive option, to move all your old emails to an archive file in your computer.
Check the size of deleted PST files by clicking on “View Deleted Item Size” and then you can delete them using “Empty” button. Another method to compact PST files. Start Microsoft Outlook. Go to the tool in the menu bar and click on Account Settings”. “Account Settings” screen will appear on your system.
Choose Data Files option. Select your data file which you want to compress. Just Double Click on the selected and click on the Settings. Then go to the “Compact Now” button to compress your MS Outlook PST file. Conclusion I n order to make Microsoft Outlook run faster, constant tweaking and optimization are required.
Unfortunately, in the Outlook case, you cannot reinstall as the reinstalling bring lots of headaches and your critical data may get lost during the process. So In order to make it better and faster, you can manage your Outlook files by compressing or splitting large PST files etc. By above steps, one can easily compress their PST files and make their Outlook faster. Hello, Your article is really very informative and useful as you have elaborated two methods to compress Outlook PST file i.e.
Mailbox Cleanup and Compact PST feature in an easier way. Now, I would like to share some more ways to compress an Outlook data file, other than these methods. As you have discussed in your article about Compact now but there is also an Auto Compact feature in Outlook which shrinks the PST file automatically upto 20% of total file size in the background whereas the Compact Now is a foreground process and we can’t access the system after running the Compact Now command. Also, both the process doesn’t shrink the Outlook files completely. So, I would like to share some more methods to reduce PST file size for user’s benefit. 2 GB Truncation Utility 2. Archive PST File 3.
Delete unwanted items To know more about the above solutions in detail, please visit the link: Thanks & Regards, Edwin Hoffer. Rather than compressing PST files, another option is to automatically compress each attached file at the time it is attached using ZipMail for Microsoft Outlook.
MS Office files and Image files are optimized natively. Made smaller without being compressed into Zip files. Thus, the process is really 100% transparent for your recipients who receive standard MS Office files and image files made smaller by ZipMail. There is no loss in rendering quality. Example of optimized files can be found here: MS Office files: Image Files.