If you store most your mails on the Exchange server and simply use Outlook to access, send or receive mails, your mailbox is probably fairly large in size. Eventually, you will get a message from the system administrator that you need to clear some items so that space from the hard disk can be cleared. In fact, some administrators or even independent email service providers might threaten that they will not allow you to receive any more mails unless and until you clear your mailbox. The worst-case scenario is when they decide to delete some of the old mails themselves. You might then have to request the administrator to restore some of the lost data or attempt to recover pst data from your backups.

Rather than face a situation where you lose important data, it is best to trim the size of your PST files even if they are stored on your local hard disk. Here are a few essential tips.

Every user should remember that merely deleting an item does not remove it from the hard disk or clear space or reduce the file size. Deleting an item merely moves it to the Deleted Items folder where it stays it is permanently deleted. You have to therefore regularly clean the items from the Deleted Items Folder by emptying the folder. You can choose to tidy your Outlook automatically but then you will have no control over what is deleted when. If you would like to delete the items from the folder manually, use the Mailbox Cleanup tool. If you have accidentally deleted some items permanently, you may have to recover pst data from backups.
If any of your mails come with big attachments and you store them in Outlook, obviously the size of the PST file too is going to increase dramatically. Make a habit of saving the attachments into another location on your hard disk. This will allow you to access the attachments more easily the next time around. This way, you can just save the important attachments without having to save the entire message. Before you start saving the attachments that you need, you should understand which location would be ideal to save the file. For example, work related files should be saved in your work folders while pictures and photos could be saved in My Pictures. Further, rather than saving it under the same name as it was sent under, you could try and save it under a name that will help you recall it more easily later.
Many users also keep a copy of the messages that they send to others. This can be useful especially in workplaces since one can track what was said when and to whom. However, you do not need all the sent messages saved in your Outlook file. You can regularly archive sent messages and other items that you do not need. Archiving is a good way of trimming the size of your PST files and also of backing up data in case you need to recover pst files, when they get damaged.

If despite trimming the size of your PST files, there are one or two occasions when the file crosses the limit and gets corrupted, you can use advanced recovery tools such as Advanced Outlook Repair from DataNumen to restore data.