Bob Schor knows that Microsoft and OutlookPower caution against sharing .PST files. But he’s got a very positive experience doing just this. Read this interesting article and gain a new perspective on the age-old debate.

It’s interesting, and sad, that a publication like OutlookPower has to spend so much time talking about scams and how to protect yourself. But email is a mass communication tool and with anything that has mass effect, you have people doing good and people doing not so good. Email certainly has provided enormous benefits to vast numbers of people, but it also creates risks. In this time of holiday celebration, many of us share goodwill, while others seek to tap into that goodwill for nefarious gain. So, before you start thinking about giving, make sure you watch your back.

Last week’s weird and quirky article was so popular, we’ve got more. Of course, when you’re talking about Outlook, you’re bound to touch on weird and quirky pretty darn soon. We have some more, in this helpful article about system resources, or the lack thereof.

We’ve gotten quite a backlog of reader questions, so I thought I’d take two of the "weird, quirky" variety and take a shot at answering them.

One of the nice things about reaching a large audience is that we sometimes learn about products from our readers. After running our series on large .pst files, I got the following letter from Jean-Paul Peretz. It’s very intriguing, so we’re reprinting it here.

This week’s PowerTip is a holiday quicky and comes as a question from a reader.

Last week, we ran "What to do when your .pst file is too big". In it, our OutlookPower Answer Team guru Francine Otterson gave guidance about .pst files growing to about 2GB. Our own editorial staff decided to add some "knowledge" to the article by pointing out that a Microsoft Knowledge Base article showed how Outlook 2003 could take your .pst file to 20GB. Ah, but a little knowledge is dangerous. This week, we provide some important cautions.

Microsoft has a 2GB size limit on the Outlook personal folders (.pst) and offline folders (.ost) file types [for Outlook versions prior to Outlook 2003]. Once the folder size reaches or goes beyond that size limit the file will not be useable even if you delete items. This article has some tips for when you take your personal folders into uncharted territory.

In this fascinating article, Rex Weston tells us how he created the DynaSend Web site and service. It’s a great insight into product design and development and is a must-read for any product developer and anyone who uses products developed by others.

Outlook reminders one of the most used functions in Outlook. No wonder, with all of our busy schedules, we need to be reminded of upcoming tasks and appointments. Without reminders, we may just go along our way, completely forgetting we had a business meeting to attend, school function or task to complete. This week, we take another look at reminder problems and their solutions.