How do I find out how big my mailbox is?
Easy! Right click on Outlook Today (the very top of the folder tree) and select Properties of “Outlook Today” as shown below:
From the next window click on Folder Size as shown below:
And you will get a summary of the sizes of all your folders, and the size of the entire mailbox:
How do I find the largest emails in any given folder?
The trick here is to order the folder by size. If you click once on the column title marked Size then you will get all the emails in that folder ordered by size (ascending). Click on it a second time to get it ordered by size (descending). The largest emails will then be located at the top of the screen. Remember that 1MB = 1,000KB, so anything larger than 1MB is VERY large.
Note: After you have done your culling of large emails and you want to return the ordering to its original setting, just click on the Received column to order the list by received date. This is the default setting.
What do I do if I cannot see the Size Column?
First check that the Size column isn’t located off to the right of screen. Scroll right over and see if it is there. If not, you can add the Size column by doing the following:
Right click the Title Column area and Select Field Chooser:
From the Field Chooser Dialogue Window, highlight the Size field as shown below:
And then drag and drop the Size field to the required location as shown below:
I have deleted as much email as I possibly can, and I am still over the storage limits. How do I export email off the server into a file?
You can export email off the server into a PST file. PST files created in Outlook XP and below are limited to 2 GB (2 Gigabytes is 2,000 Megabytes) in size. PST files created in Outlook 2003 and beyond are limited to 20Gb. Furthermore, you can have as many PST files as you like.
To do this, open Outlook and create a folder that you intend to be the root of what you would like to export. Drag and drop all the emails that you want to keep into this folder. Select File >>> Import and Export >>> Export to a file >>> NEXT >>> Personal Folder File (.pst) >>> NEXT >>> Highlight the folder that is the top of the tree of what you want to export (and if you have sub-folders make sure you also check the box marked Include Subfolders). See below for more detail:
Click NEXT >>> Select the option to not export duplicate items. Enter a name and location for the PST file. The best place to save your file would be H drive in a subfolder called Mail. Give the file an intuitive name. The name you choose here is the name as it will appear when you browse H drive.
Click OK.
Give the PST an intuitive Outlook name. The name you choose here is the name as it will appear in Outlook when you attach the file later on.
Leave the setting for Compressible Encryption. Add a password if the data is confidential. Click OK. Depending on how much data you are exporting it will take anywhere from 1 second to several minutes to export your data. Outlook may appear to be frozen during this time, but it will come good once the export is complete.
If you browse to your H drive and look in the mail folder (or wherever you selected earlier) you should find the PST file you have just created.
Now that you have exported the data you will want to open up the file just to confirm that the export was successful. To do this, Open up Outlook and select File >>> Open >>> Outlook Data File. See below:
Browse to the PST file that you created in your H drive and click OK. You should now see the file you created earlier logged within Outlook. See below:
Browse this file to confirm that all your email is there, and then once you are satisfied you can delete the original data off the server. Job complete!
How do I empty my Deleted Items?
The easiest way to reduce the size of your mailbox is to empty the Deleted Items folder. If you would like to manually empty your Deleted Items, simply right-click on your Deleted Items folder and select Empty Deleted Items as shown below:
But if you would like to automatically empty all your Deleted Items each time you close Outlook simply click on Tools >>> Options >>> Other, and check the box marked Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting as shown below:
I hope you have found these tips helpful. With a little housekeeping, Outlook is an excellent messaging tool, and with practice, all the tips you have just read will become second nature.