What to do after getting Folder is full error in Outlook

PST files in Outlook are meant to store user’s important documents such as mails, appointments, tasks, notes, journals etc. safely. But its capacity to store data varies with the versions of Outlook. In versions earlier than 2002, the files are ANSI formatted which have the file size limitation of 2GB. But Outlook 2002 and later one are in Unicode format that stores 20GB of data. So, when these files exceed their file size limit, you might face certain problems and errors such as folder is full error and the need arises to repair them.

Consider a situation where you are making an attempt to move a file in Outlook 2000, but the following message appears on screen:

“Cannot move the items. The folder is full”

In case, if you go for renaming the file, you get:

“Cannot rename. The folder is full”.

Cause:

The above error occurs when the PST file becomes oversized i.e. reaches its maximum file size limit. When the ANSI formatted file gets around 1.82 GB in size, the Outlook starts showing slow performance issues and various errors.

Solution:

First of all, you need to check the PST file size. Browse to the location where the file is stored. Then after, right click the folder and go to Properties option to know the actual file size. After that, go through the below steps to reduce the size:

• Delete the unnecessary mails or documents that are of no use
• Secondly, clear the Deleted Items folder and compact PST

Another option you can opt for is PST Split by making use of split PST file software. It is especially meant to break PST file on the basis of email IDs, date, folders etc into several smaller partitions. As it helps in the reduction of size and thus resolves the folder is full error completely.