Is your mailbox full? Are you getting weekly or even daily messages from your system administrator saying you need to reduce the Microsoft Outlook mailbox size? This can lead to a lot of wasted time cleaning up your mailbox. It is important to remember that mailboxes are not designed to be used as file storage. We offer network shares where documents should be kept. Keeping a mailbox free of large items not only reduces demand on Missouri Slopes limited server resources but also will improve the performance of your mailbox. 

Try these tips for a faster, more organized approach to keep your mailbox smaller and easier to work with.

Empty Deleted Items

Quickly clean up your deleted items by automatically emptying the Deleted Items folder when you exit Outlook. To apply this option choose File > Options > Advanced tab. From the Outlook start and exit option, check Empty Deleted Items folder when exiting Outlook and OK to apply.

To manually clear deleted items, locate and right-click the Deleted Items folder and click Empty Folder on the shortcut menu (Empty “Deleted Items” Folder for Outlook 2010). Once you clear deleted items, it cannot be reversed. If you feel confident that you want to delete a message forever, you can bypass the Deleted Items folder by pressing [Shift] + [Delete] for a selected item instead of pressing the [Delete] key. Then confirm the delete process.

Locate messages that use the most storage

1. First select the down arrow next to the sort column header. This will show the list of sort columns you can view the mailbox by. 

2. Select Size from the menu

3. Your inbox will be reordered according to the headers. You want to be viewing by size with largest at the top. You can toggle between largest and smallest by clicking that header. 

4. Your messages will now be grouped by size. 

5. This should now help you visualize everything that is consuming the most space in your mailbox. Ideally you should have no items listed that are larger than the medium size. A few Large items will not take up much of your mailbox total. Any over the large category should be removed if not needed or moved to file storage if you wish to retain the data. 

Removing messages 

Removing the items you do not need is simple. Select the message messages you wish to remove and either hit the delete key or right click them and select the delete option. 

Remember the space in your mailbox is not actually free until the messages are also removed from the deleted items folder as well. 

Save the entire message with attachments 

If you must keep the entire message with the attachments you can copy the message out of your mailbox and paste it into an fileserver folder. 

1. Right click the message select copy

2. Navigate to any folder you wish to store the message on. This likely will be a destination in the F: or Z: drive. 

3. Paste the message into the destination you selected. 

4. When you open the message from the file system the original message will open in outlook with the attachment in place. 

5. Delete the message from your mailbox once this is complete

Remember the space in your mailbox is not actually free until the messages are also removed from the deleted items folder as well.