A new option in Outlook 2013 is aimed at reducing the size of the OST file on a local machine, when Outlook is in cached mode.
In earlier version of Outlook, the entire mailbox was sync’d to your local machine, creating an OST file as large as your mailbox. This may not be an ideal situation for firms that encourage hot desking with PCs at every desk. If a PC is used by 10 staff, the hard drive will have OST files as large as the total size of their mailbox. This could run into a good size!
A new option is exposed in Outlook 2013 aimed at reducing the OST file size and giving admins the flexibility to control the amount of data that gets sync’d to a local machine. The Offline Settings in Outlook 2013 gives a slider bar to adjust the age of the mails to be sync’d – from one month old to everything you have in the mailbox.
The default setting is 12 months and the least you can go down is to have one month of data sync’d. The other options are 3, 6, 12, 24 months and All (everything).
Users/admins who are not aware of this option may find that their emails are missing or a search doesn’t bring expected results ;)
