You’re happily working away on your computer, sending and
receiving email. Suddenly your Inbox
starts filling up with messages from the system administrator on your network,
stating that you’ve reached the storage limits of your email account and can no
longer send or receive email until you free up some space.
This scenario is most common in the workplace, where users
save their email data on a company server.
However, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) allow their users to
save email on the company’s server rather than on the customer’s local hard
drive. This could also happen on a free
email service like Yahoo or Hotmail.
They, too, have limits on how much data can be saved before it’s
considered excessive.
Before you reach the point where you’re locked out of email,
you might want to do some easy maintenance on your messages. It doesn’t take long and can save you some
grief down the road.
1. Find out how
much space you’re using. Before you
start deleting messages, you might want to know just how much space your emails
are taking up. Outlook provides a
convenient way to find out. Simply
right-click on the desired folder, then in the drop-down menu, click on
“Properties". In the new window that
appears, the “General" tab should be displayed. Click on the button labeled “Folder Size…" in the lower left
corner. Another window pops up on
screen showing the total size of all messages (including attachments) in
thousands of bytes, or K, and a second field which adds in the sizes of all
subfolders included in that folder.
2. Save your
attachments. Yes, those attachments
count as part of your used space. And
we all know some of them can get pretty large.
Instead of saving the email message with the attachment intact, save the
attachment somewhere else on your computer and delete the message. How you do it is easy enough: Open the message containing the attachment. Right-click on the attachment itself, and in
the drop-down menu, click “Save As".
You can save the file anywhere on your computer. Of course, once you’ve done that, you need
to delete the email message containing the attachment to free up that space.
3. Clear out the
Deleted Items folder. No, you
didn’t read it wrong. When you delete
email messages from any folder, they go to the Deleted Items folder. However, unless you’ve set up Outlook so
that this folder is erased automatically, those deleted messages continue to
accumulate, taking up server space. You
can manually do a quick clean-up of this folder by clicking on it to open it
clicking once on any message in the folder to select it pressing CTRL-A on
your keyboard to select all the items in the folder and then pressing the DEL
key. Or you can automate the process by
doing the following: From the Outlook
menu bar, click on “Tools". In the
dropdown menu that appears, click on “Options". From the row of tabs across the top of the new window that
appears, click on “Other". In the first
section, “General", click on the box labeled “Empty the Deleted Items folder
upon exiting". If you click on “OK" at
this point, every time you exit Outlook a message will appear asking if you
want to delete all the items in the Deleted Items folder. Clicking on “Yes" deletes all messages in
that folder completely. Poof. Gone.
Instant free space!
4. Clear out the
Sent Items folder. Most people
stick with the defaults when using Outlook.
This means every time you send an email message, a copy of your message
gets sent to this folder, adding to the total space used by your email
account. You can use the same manual
process described above (open folder, CTRL-A to select all messages, DEL to
delete) to empty this folder periodically.
You can also change settings to automatically delete files from this
folder after a certain period of time has expired. It’s a different process than what you used in item #3 above, and
can be used on any other folder you have in Outlook. How do you do that? Well,
read on!
5. Turn on the
AutoArchive feature. Outlook has a
feature that will regularly remove email messages on a schedule of your
choosing. To turn this feature on, in
the menu bar in Outlook click on “Tools", then in the drop-down menu that
appears, click on “Options". In the new
window that is displayed, click on the tab labeled “Other". The second section of this tab,
“AutoArchive", is the one you want.
Click on the “AutoArchive…" button to display the configuration window. Click on the box to check the option to
“AutoArchive every…" and then enter how many days you want to go between job
runs. If you want items to be
permanently deleted, check the third box, “Delete expired items when
AutoArchiving". If you want to save
them, don’t check this box instead, look in the display bar labeled “Default
archive file:" and select a location and file name (I recommend saving the file
in your “My Documents" folder and sticking with the default file name,
ARCHIVE.PST). Click “OK" and
AutoArchiving is turned on. “So what?"
you ask. Well, read on!
6. Automate
deleting items from your folders.
Now that AutoArchive is turned on, any folder in Outlook that contains
email can be set up to automatically remove items after a certain period of
time. Just as in AutoArchive, the items
can be moved to an archive file for storage, or can be permanently deleted from
Outlook. Here’s how you set it up: Right-click on the desired folder. In the drop-down menu that appears, click on
“Properties". Look at the row of tabs
across the top of the new window that is displayed, and click on the one
labeled “AutoArchive". Click in the box
next to “Clean out items older than" to turn this option on. Once you’ve done that, you can select the
“expiration date" you want, in days, weeks, or months. You then choose between archiving these
items (I recommend saving the file in your “My Documents" folder, but changing
the file name to match the folder name, keeping the .PST file extension) or
permanently delete them. Clicking on
“OK" finished the process. Now Outlook
will automatically remove items from this folder that are older than your
expiration date, based on the schedule that you set up in step #5, and either
delete them permanently or put them into the archived .PST file you requested.
7. Don’t forget
other Outlook folders. Remember
that anything stored in Outlook takes up space. If you’re using the Contact folder to maintain your address book,
or the Calendar to schedule appointments, or the Tasks folder to track your
To-Do list, you’ll want to clear out old items so that they don’t get
overwhelmingly large and cause potential problems for you. The Contact folder is unique in that it
can’t be set up to automatically remove entries after a certain period of time
(and really, do you WANT to lose that information on Aunt Gertrude if you
haven’t updated it for six months?), so that one you’ll want to maintain
manually. However, Calendar and Tasks
entries are usually timed events, and therefore items can be removed
automatically just as they can for email.
As with other folders, you can remove these items manually or automate
them using the instructions outlined above.
A quick note if you choose to archive your data: Files in the .PST file format can be opened
in Outlook and viewed as a separate folder.
To view these archive files, go to the menu bar in Outlook and click on
“File", then “Open". Outlook
automatically goes to “My Documents" to look for data files with the .PST
extension (and NOW you know why I recommended saving the files in that
folder!). Click on the one you want,
and the folder will open, showing all the items that have been archived. If you have a lot of data to archive,
though, you might want to consider renaming this file periodically. Outlook 2000 cannot open a .PST file that’s
larger than 2 GB (2 gigabytes, or 1 thousand megabytes). Just watch your folder sizes (you should
know how to check that after reading Part 1) and when they get close, rename
the .PST file. Outlook will open up a
new .PST file with the original name the next time it needs to archive, and
you’ll get to start all over again.
Cleaning out your folders in Outlook is a lot like spring
cleaning. Sometimes it can get messy,
and if it’s been awhile since you’ve done it, it can be time-consuming. However, the end result is more free space,
less clutter, and the satisfied feeling you get knowing you’ve successfully
completed a task. Hopefully these hints
will make the going a little easier.
About the author:
Danny Davids has over 25 years of experience in computer support,
network administration, and computer consulting.
tweet this!