Productivity Enhancements
Most enhancements and new features increase productivity, but they're more specific to a specific area of use, so they appear in other areas of this chapter. All changes and new features are supposed to make you productive. However, the new file format is one change you might not even notice.
More Storage Room
Outlook 2003 personal folders are hugechances are you'll never run out of space. That's because Outlook 2003 offers a new compressed file format, Unicode. Personal folders that use this format are capable of storing terabytes of data. Earlier versions were limited to 2GB.
Upgraders Beware
The Unicode format has one major drawback: Older versions can't read Unicode formatted data. If you need to share data files with older versions of Outlook, don't use this format. The previous format is still available. When you create a new personal folders file, Outlook 2003 lets you select between the two formats.
Expert Advice
A large personal folders file won't perform as well as you like. For optimum performance, keep your files at 5GB or smaller or things might slow down a bit.