Jason Dunn is a great friend:

Saw your blog post. Yup, 2 GB limit. Solution? Archive PST, just like you’ve probably always had for keeping your PST file size down. If there’s really 2 GB of data that you absolutely need on the server at all times, then yeah, I guess hosted Exchange isn’t for you (I don’t know if any solution is).

Myself, I run at around 1.5 GB in my OST. I have an offline archive, but I’ve found that deleting the attachments on some of my sent items (99% of the time they’re files that are already on my local drive) is a super fast way to free up storage. Slight hassle, but not too bad. Or you can just archive them. I have 24,735 messages in my sent items folder on the server, going back to September 2005. So I can search two years back, immediately…hard to beat that.

Yeah, try convincing Ponzi to detatch those attachments… you’d be the third person who isn’t me to suggest such a thing. :)

Oh, so this is a Ponzi issue…well that changes everything. ;-) Are you using Outlook 2007 Ponzi? You can configure it to auto-archive messages in your Sent Item folder older than “x” days, where “x” is the break-point for where you REALLY think you need to have it on the server and be searchable. I also find that if I go into my sent items and sort by size, I quite often see the biggest files are email messages I’ve sent that have the same content – my advertising information for instance. Deleting that has zero impact on my operations, because their response to that (without the big attachments) is the important part.

So, Ponzi finally jumped into the thread:

Oh, I guess an example would help. For instance – large item is our scanned documents of a potential house buy that fell through. There were several relationships around that transaction that I need to keep track of though they aren’t friends. I need to make sure I have each of the copies as each one has minor changes. Though if I move them from that email I can’t remember the conversation around what changes were made to that particular doc.

And Jason responded:

Sure – so this in case, I’d created a folder in your archive.pst file and move them down to the local hard drive. They’re still there for reference, but they’re not up on the server.

And Ponzi responded:

Oh my gosh, now this just got even stickier than I thought it would be. I hear I need to go through all my messages and unattach items etc. I’m so worried I won’t be able to find something, unless I can search by email. Are there any solutions that could help with this? Chris tells me to tag but I can’t always remember in the same ways as him so it’s harder to locate later. Without copernic desktop search (when we’re on the road) I like to search through email because it puts the item in context because I can see the conversation around that particular attachment. Any ideas how I can separate my large attachments but keep the context?

There’s no simple solution in sight, it seems. We’ll likely be getting some kind of network storage at some point in the near future, which may or may not help. Recommendations welcome.

• The Reasons I Chose Rackspace for Hosting
• Outlook Contacts from OPML

I love our community. From Eric’o'theque, Gnomedex Outlook Contacts from the Gnomedex OPML. It doesn’t work with Outlook 2000, though:

Here’s something interesting for the other attendees: Chris released the OPML of the folks registered for Gnomedex. Dave pointed to a directory listing web page created out of the OPML. Over the weekend and a few recent late nights, I ran a script to get the OPML into Outlook as contacts and then decided to put snapshots of the various speakers into the contact cards, along with throwing in categories for Gnomedex and Gnomedex-Speaker.

Then I gave the mouse a cookie.

I decided, hey, why not get to know all of your fellow attendees by visiting their given web page. And, hey, if they have a headshot, why not throw that into their contact info. Oh, and, hey, if they have a bio or such, why not throw that into their contact details.

This got a little carried away. So I’d like to share it, if I could: Outlook contacts for Gnomedex 06.

• Tagging Your Posts for Gnomedex
• OPML to RSS
• Todd Friesen – Confessions of a Reformed Spammer
• Gnomedex 9 Photo Awards with Kris Krug
• Microsoft Office 2010 Comparison Screencast
• Chris Brogan and Julien Smith – Rise of the Trust Agents
• Phil Plait – Active Skepticism Online
• The Business of Social Media
• Christine Peterson – Life Extension for Geeks
• Firas Khatib – FoldIt