Poll: How big is your database?

By Diane Ross | June 17, 2009

Want to know how the size of your database compares to other users? Take our poll and check back to compare.

If you follow us on twitter, you will will be able to easily participate in any future polls.

Don’t know how to check for the size of your database?

Entourage stores all of your data (Rules, mailing lists, signatures, messages, address book, schedules, contacts, tasks, notes, calendar events) in a database. Your database is located in your Identity named Main by default.

~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 Identities/Main Identity
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7 comments to Poll: How big is your database?

  • Al Varnell
    June 19, 2009 at 3:35 am

    Entourage 2004 Data Base 1.59 GB.

  • Diane Ross
    June 19, 2009 at 10:13 am

    Thanks for sharing. I hope you voted in the poll so your number will be part of the averages.

  • Fabrice
    June 22, 2009 at 10:49 am

    Such huge file sizes as Entourage creates makes network backup a real pain. How I wish they’d break it up into separate files (such as one for each mailbox, one for contacts, etc.)
    –F.

  • Diane Ross
    June 22, 2009 at 11:02 am

    There are way to archive or move your messages out of your current Identity to keep it smaller and still have access. Check out:
    Archive Your Data
    Backup Individual Items
    Archiving your e-mails with EagleFiler
    FWIW, contacts, events, notes, tasks are very small files. It’s your messages especially attachments that are large.
    I also encourage you to Send MSFT feedback

  • Bert
    August 3, 2009 at 7:18 am

    My database is 907.6 MB, so even though I checked “under 1GB” I will soon be in the 1-4GB range.

  • Ng
    September 10, 2009 at 1:28 am

    My database is 14.8BG. what should I do in order to back up in an external hard disk? My external hard disk has 390GB empty space. Thanks

  • Diane Ross
    September 10, 2009 at 11:16 am

    You can simply copy over your Main Identity to the external. I suggest putting it in a folder with the date in the name. Other wise you would have to check the Date Modified on the database file.
    You can export your data as an .rge file or just messages as .mbox files. We cover all these options in our backup Entourage series. Backup Entourage Series
    If you are asking how to reduce the size of your database and archive those messages, this is a bit more complex. See this page to get you started.
    Archive Your Data
    Tip: If you export all items as Entourage archive (.rge) file then compare the size of the .rge file to the size of your database file, you can see how much ‘wasted space’ is in your database.

    The database will be left with ‘wasted’ space in it every time you delete something. However, this is not all bad, since the wasted space is used up with new data as it is added. This way, over a period of time (assuming that you are deleting stuff as you go) the database will probably reach an optimum size, after which the stuff you delete is roughly equal to the stuff you add, and no further growth takes place.
    If you need to recover the wasted space on your hard disk, you will have to do a ‘typical’ rebuild to compact the database. This will create a compacted version of the database without the wasted space. You will then have to manually delete the backup copies of the original database that the rebuild process creates AFTER you are happy the new one is OK.

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