Avoiding email jail

42716ISemail640Like your car’s engine or your kitchen drain, keep your mailbox clean and well-maintained and you’ll seldom have problems.

Perform routine maintenance at least monthly

  1. Delete items from your Inbox, or move them to a personal folder or a drive
  2. Delete items from your Sent Items folder, or move them to a personal folder or a drive
  3. Delete items from your Conversation History folder
  4. Delete everything in your RSS Feeds and Sync Issues folders
  5. Empty the Deleted items folder

Check folder size to know when you are nearing capacity

Outlook 2007

  1. Click the Folder List icon
  2. Click Folder sizes
  3. Click the Server Data tab
  4. Click Close, Close

Outlook 2010 and 2013

  1. Click File
  2. Go down to Mailbox Cleanup and click Cleanup Tools
  3. Click Mailbox Cleanup
  4. Click View Mailbox Size
  5. Click the Server Data tab
  6. Click Close, Close

Deal with large messages

  1. In Mail, go to the Navigation pane and click Search Folders/Large Mail
    Note: The messages listed are from all your folders
  2. Delete or save large messages/attachments elsewhere

OWA users: The Large Mail search folder is a default in Outlook. If you don’t see it in the navigation pane in OWA, go to Outlook and click the folder. It should then appear in OWA.

Clean out large calendar items (typically meeting invitations with large attachments)

  1. Go to Calendar
    • In Outlook 2007 click View/Current View/All Appointments
    • In Outlook 2010 or 2013 click View/Change View/List
  2. Click Size column (if you don’t have a Size column, right-click a column heading, click Field Chooser, then click down arrow and select All Appointments Fields. Then scroll and click-hold-drag Size to row and release.)
  3. The largest calendar entries will be at the top of the list and you can focus on them first.
  4. Open a large calendar event.
  5. If it has a large attachment that you want
    • Save the attachment to a network folder
    • Delete attachment from the appointment
  6. If there are graphics included in the item, consider deleting the graphic
  7. If the item is large because of the number of people included in the invitation, consider deleting a past item and reposting the information as a new item on your calendar as a reminder.
    • Important: If the calendar event is a recurring meeting that has not ended, contact the meeting organizer. Ask them to delete the attachment and send an updated invitation to all attendees. The file can be saved on SharePoint or the G or S drive and accessed by the meeting attendees from there.
    • If you delete attachments or edit a meeting entry in any way and the organizer later sends out an update, all your changes will be overwritten.
  8. Return to your normal view, mostly commonly Day/Week/Month
    • In Outlook 2007 click View/ Current and make your selection
    • In Outlook 2010 and 2013 click View/Change View and make your selection

Attachments
Click  here for detailed instructions on dealing with attachments.

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