New to this Outlook stuff so be gentle...

Partner has Outlook 2000 a/c which is getting slow and beginning to lock up,
presumably through a lack of attention to archiving.

I understood that the main pst could be up to 2gig in this version but am
not sure if, when the user also has the archive folders showing in the
folder list, the size of the archive pst has to be included in an overall
2gig 'working margin'.

I ask this, because when I tried to 'shave the inbox' a year at a time say,
I found that the archive.pst only filled up to 738695, and then seemed to
stick even when further archiving was selected.

I can drag and drop files into the archive folders to increase this number,
but the automatic functions don't seem to do it. I have tried this even
with the 'ignore do not archive' box ticked (even though I have no idea
where 'do not archive' flags are kept!) but this does not get the stubborn
files moving on their own.

It seems more than coincidental that the OutlookPersonal pst at 1258889, and
the archive pst stuck at 738695, between them come nearly to the magic 2gig.

So, is the archiving capability 'broken' and if so, how to fix?

Or: does one have to archive 'blind' with the archive.pst closed (or at
least, not shown in the folder tree). If so, how does one monitor whether
it has enough room to take further archiving and still be openable by
Outlook. I appreciate that an upgrade to a later version would get around
the problem for now, but I suspect that this would just lead to a much
bigger 20gig seize up before said partner gets around to archiving properly!

Thanks in advance,

S