How to Repair Large Outlook 2007 PST on Windows 7

[OliverDan]

User running Windows 7, with Outlook 2007, 20 GB PST.
User has two email account, 1 may be an IMAP, 1 may be POP, or both can be POP (I'll check if necessary)
No Exchange accounts.

Outlook wouldn't start, so I used SCANPST to repair (took hours, of course). Outlook ran slowly, but now is getting stuck again.

Ran Windows 7 Error-checking, with "Scan For and attempt recovery of bad sectors".

My thought was to:
Restart with startup items turned off.
Upgrade to Office 2013
See if Outlook will open the PST
Run SCANPST again

Does SCANPST compact the PST ?
Should I compact after running SCANPST ?

If I get Outlook Running, should I move old messages to separate PST files, a year at a time?

Any 3rd party repair tools that I can use?


Thanks.

 

[hang-the-9]

That file is too large for Outlook to run well, yes you do want to break it up into smaller ones. 2 gig is about the max in older Outlook versions, 2007 can go higher but 4 gig or so it starts to be unstable.