Multiple email clients exist in this technological era, but most rely upon Microsoft Outlook. There are several reasons why user moves to Outlook because it is cost-effective, faster, and a reliable platform. Despite all such functionality and offerings, Outlook users face difficulty managing their data.
MS Outlook saves its data on the local drive in the PST file format. If the user has lots of Outlook data, then there will be a case when multiple PST files get created. Different Outlook versions have the recommended size for the PST file, and if that breaches, the Outlook working also gets affected. The user will also find it difficult to handle multiple PST and look to merge PST files into a single PST. So this blog will carry all the required information, which will assist all users in merging the collection of all PST into a single one.
Why should the User look to merge PST files?
Before starting with the methods to join the multiple PST, we will update with why users look for PST merge. There might be different opinions behind the reason for merging PST, but the below mentioned are some of them that almost all users might have faced in their life.
- Whenever the user requires shifting from one Outlook version to a newer one, the user looks to merge all the small PST and make the big size PST file.
- As PST files are prone to data corruption, it would be better to manage multiple PST; you can join them into a single PST.
- If the user needs to migrate from Outlook to any other email client, multiple PST will take more time to merge than a single PST.
- Mostly all Outlook users take the backup of their profile. Creating a single file makes sense instead of managing multiple small backup files.
- Instead of creating several user inboxes or any other folder, merging them into one folder will ease the task of managing them.
Merging the PST makes sense because the permissible limit for the PST file has increased in the latest Outlook versions. Now the user saves approximately 50 GB of data in the PST file of newer Outlook versions.
Apart from the situations mentioned above, there can be many more reasons to merge the PST files. But more importantly, here, the question arises of how to merge PST files by keeping their data integrity unchanged.
Conventional Manual Procedure for PST Merge
If you want to merge the multiple small PST files into one file, you can follow the below-mentioned process. This method will work in two phases which are as follows:
Phase 1: Create a New PST file
- The first step is to launch MS Outlook. Go to New Item, highlight the More item option and click on Outlook Data file.
- Choose the location where you need to save the PST file. Hit the OK button to Continue.
Phase 2: Merge Old Outlooks PST into Newly Created PST
- In the MS Outlook, click on File, then process by selecting Open & Export>> Import/Export
- Now in the Import and the Export Wizard, choose “Import From Another Program or File”. Click on Next to move ahead.
- Select Outlook Data File from the Import a file wizard and click the Next button.
- Here, you can select the option to not import the duplicate items and to move another step, click on Next button.
- You can also select the folder which you need to import from the PST into the newer one. Hit the Finish button to complete the process.
Note: This is a hectic process as it takes ample of user time to complete the process. It is not an easy process to follow especially for the non tech users and any mistake during the process to merge PST file can even harm the data integrity or even corrupt the PST file. Instead look for some good third-party tool which will work efficiently while merging the multiple PSTs.
Simple Process to Merge Multiple Outlook PST files
Generally, merging lots of PST files requires supervision and takes time too. But using some professional utilities like the Shoviv PST Merge tool to manage the merging process easily. This software stands out from its competitor in terms of quality, efficiency, and user interface for many different reasons.
The software comes with many modern features which make the whole process of merging PST effortlessly. This utility brings multiple user-centric features like the ability to combine the PST file of any length without changing their folder hierarchy. Numerous other options available while merging the PST file and are compatible with working with all Windows Operating systems.
Conclusion
User has multiple options for conducting the process of merging several PST, but not all of them offer the same flexibility as the professional tool does. So if you have lots of PST files and need to carry out
