.pst file details incorrect

[nyanta]

Hi,
I used Everything to find and monitor the active .pst file associated with my Microsoft Outlook mail account. I wanted to delete some emails so I wanted to keep an eye on the .pst file to see how much it would shrink.

So, the first thing I did was search for ".pst" and I quickly located the .pst file. It was 6,088,000 KB in size.

I then deleted several hundred emails from Outlook but noticed the .pst file size didn't change when viewed in Everything.

I wondered if I needed to "compact" the .pst to free up the space so I performed a Compact from within Outlook. The .pst size remained the same.

I then closed and reopened Outlook. Still, the .pst file remained the same. This seemed strange.

After another 10 minutes of messing around I right clicked on the .pst file (from within Everything) and used the "Open Path" command to view the file using Windows File Explorer. Doing this I could see the size displayed was 5,222,000 KB.

When I viewed the file in Everything it was still stating 6,088,000 KB. I tried refreshing the Everything display (F5). I even closed Everything and restarted it a few times and re-searched for the .pst file. It still stubbornly stated the size as 6,088,000 KB.

I couldn't figure out why Everything was still reporting a file size that had changed almost 20 minutes ago.

After a few Google searches I decided to post to this forum. By the time I had registered and started writing this I realised that Everything had finally noticed the new file size and was now accurately reporting it.

I am used to Everything being lightening fast, especially for searching files so I was stumped as to why it seemed to using size data that was at least 20 minutes out of date. If Windows File Explorer knew the correct size, why didn't everything?

If anyone can shed some light on why this was the case I'd love to know what the answer is.

Thanks

[void]

Everything only updates the file size when all handles to the file are closed.

[nyanta]

Thank you for the reply. It now makes sense

I downloaded this very useful utility, which lists all opened files on my PC.

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/opened_files_view.html

Sure enough, even after closing Outlook, the file was still held open by Microsoft Word for awhile.

Case closed, thank you again for explaining the situation.