That, for Princes of Denmark, and everyone else is, of course, the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageously large Outlook profiles,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of emails,
And by opposing end them.
To what do we owe this hideous mangling of the bard’s words? I seek to enlighten users of Outlook on this vexatious topic. Purging here refers to the final deletion of emails that you have already placed in the deleted folder. To use current terms it is “hard” deletion rather than “soft” deletion. Once you have purged the emails they are gone for good – the only way back is to find them from a backup – if you have one.
So why would you purge? The idea is to minimise the size of your Outlook .pst file, or profile. Over time the profile grows and performance becomes sluggish. You may experience instances of the dreaded “Outlook is not responding”. Purging makes it all better.
You can purge manually or automatically: Microsoft tells you how.