Quick Guide on How to Clean up your Mailbox
Quick Guide
• Check your Mailbox size
• Empty the Deleted Items and Junk E-Mail folders
• Delete unnecessary Sent Items
• Search for your largest messages
• Save and remove large attachments
• Archive messages to a personal folder.ac.uk/is
Check your Mailbox size
The amount of free space in your mailbox is shown in the Status Bar in the bottom left corner of Outlook. This is updated when Outlook is opened.
For more details 1. Click the File tab
2. You will see a clearer representation of your mailbox size
3. Choose Cleanup Tools > Mailbox Cleanup 4. Click View Mailbox Size…
5. You will see a breakdown of all your folders by size. This is a good way to identify which folders are taking up the most space so you can consider deleting emails from these first.
6. Click View Deleted Items Size… to see how much space is being taken up by obsolete emails. You can Empty the Deleted Items from the Mailbox Cleanup dialog box.
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Empty the Deleted Items and Junk E-Mail folders
If you need to free up space immediately
• Empty the Deleted Items folder
• Empty Junk E-mail folder
Empty a folder
Select the folder in the Navigation pane Either:
• Right click the folder > choose Empty Folder
• Choose Folder tab > Empty Folder .ac.uk/its
Delete any unnecessary Sent Items
Review your Sent Items folder and delete any unnecessary emails.
To find the largest Sent Items 1. Select the Sent Items folder
2. Choose View tab > click the Size button
3. The items will be arranged by size with the largest at the top 4. Consider deleting anything over 1 MB
5. Consider if items over 500 KB need to be kept
When you have finished
6. Choose View tab > click the Date button to arrange your emails by date .ac.uk/its
Search for your largest messages
You can use a Search Folder to search across all your mailbox folders and quickly find all your largest emails.
At the bottom of your folder list in the Navigation pane there is a folder called Search Folders
Use the Large Mail Search Folder
When you select the Large Mail search folder your mailbox will be searched and mail will be displayed in order of size regardless of where it is stored. You will see a mixture of mail from your Inbox, subfolders and Sent Items.
Mail will be categorised as
• Enormous (bigger than 5 MB)
• Huge (1 MB - 5 MB)
• Very Large (500 KB – 1 MB)
• Large (100 - 500 KB) .ac.uk/its
Look at the emails categorised as Enormous and Huge. Consider whether you can
• Delete the email
• Save the attachment to your personal Z: drive then delete the attachment from the email
If you have used the Large Mail Search Folder before
1. Click the white arrow next to the Search Folders to expand it 2. Choose Large Mail
If you haven’t used a Search Folder before 1. Right click on Search Folders
2. Choose New Search Folder…
3. Scroll down to the section Organizing Mail 4. Select Large mail
5. Click OK .ac.uk/its
Save and remove large attachments
The space taken up by a 1 MB attachment is equivalent to the space taken up by approximately 100 standard email messages. If you save large attachments to your Personal Z: drive then remove them from the email you will free up space in your mailbox.
Either view the message in your reading pane or open the message
1. Right click on the attachment > choose Save As
2. Save the attachment to a folder in Z:\My Documents
When you are satisfied that the file has been saved you can remove the attachment or delete the email.
3. Right click on the attachment > choose Remove Attachment .ac.uk/its
Archive messages to a personal folder
You can create an Outlook Data File (.pst) which is stored on your personal E: drive. The folder can be viewed from within Outlook and you can move messages to the folder. Archive messages stored in the Outlook Data File will no longer take up space in your Mailbox.
Benefit
• Mail can be kept but won’t fill up your mailbox
Considerations
• Outlook Data Files can’t be accessed from Outlook Web Mail
• The link to your Outlook Data File can be broken, for example during an upgrade or profile reset. You can link to it again
• The link to your Outlook Data File doesn’t always show when you work on a different University computer.
You can link to it again
• If an archive becomes too big it can get corrupt
Best practice
If you intend to archive mail indefinitely, create a separate Outlook Data File for each year e.g. 2011, 2012, 2013.
Store your Outlook data files in the default location E:\Documents\Archive-NetID.pst
Note: If you’re using the University laptop service, in case of change of computer first of all any archive files must be transferred to your new laptop or PC. Then secondly the Archive File needs to be added to your Outlook profile on your new Laptop or PC.
Create an Archive
1. Choose Home > New Items > More Items > Outlook Data File…
2. Check that the file is being saved to E:\Documents
3. Type in a suitable name for your archive folder
4. The folder will show in Outlook at the bottom of your Folder List in the Navigation pane with the name you chose
Add mail to an archive
You can drag and drop a whole folder from your Mailbox to your archive folder.
Before you move individual emails into the archive create a new folder within the archive folder to store them in.
• Right click on the archive folder > New Folder .ac.uk/its
Link to an existing archive folder
If an archive folder you have created doesn’t show in your Folder List 1. Choose File tab > Account Settings... > Account Settings...
2. Within the Account Settings dialog box click the Data Files tab 3. Click Add…
4. Browse to E:\Documents or the location where you stored your .pst file 5. Select your .pst file
6. Click OK
7. The folder will appear at the bottom of your Folder List 8. Click the white arrow next to the folder to view the contents
Automatically Archive messages
It is possible to set up Outlook so that items over a certain age limit are automatically moved to an archive folder.
Increase your mailbox quota
If you have taken steps to reduce the size of your mailbox but continue to run out of space it may be possible for your mailbox quota to be increased.
Contact IT Service Desk to discuss your quota.