Understand your Mailbox Quota

In order to optimize the performance of the School’s Exchange servers, all students and staff have quotas on their mailboxes, to deter them from storing unnecessary mail and other Outlook items. You will receive automatic messages if your mailbox goes over quota. If you don’t delete items you will eventually be unable to send, or even receive messages.

To see the size of your mailbox and the email folders inside it:

1. Ensure that the Folder List is displayed in the Navigation Pane.

2. Click on Folder Sizes to display the Folder Size dialog box.

 

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What makes the mailbox so big

Your main email folder is the Inbox. Your Inbox is located inside of your mailbox along with the other folders that are created by Outlook to store information. Other folders that contain email include Deleted Items, Drafts, Outbox, and Sent Items. Knowing how much space is being taken up by them is your first step towards keeping your mailbox trim.

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Arranging email messages by size

Knowing individual message size can help you as you work to control the overall size of your mailbox. In your Inbox you can group messages by size.

To arrange email messages by size:
1. Ensure that View | Arrange by | Show in Groups is selected.
2. Click on View | Arrange by | Size. Your messages will be sorted into groups such as Tiny (< 10 KB), Small (10 - 25 KB), and so on.

To see beyond the range of "Tiny," "Small," and so on, you can manipulate the Outlook window so that you can see the exact size for each message that lands in your Inbox.

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Display Message Size Field

You may want to check the size of individual messages. The message size field can easily be added to your Inbox, Sent Items, or any other Outlook mail folder.

To display the message size field:
1. On the Advanced toolbar, click on the Field Chooser button to display the Field Chooser list.




 

2. Scroll down the list of fields until the Size field is displayed.
3. Then drag and drop the Size field from the Field Chooser list to the area between any of two grey field headers to add the Size field to the message pane.

You can click on any of the field headers to sort the message list by that field. Clicking a second time alternates the list between ascending and descending order. Clicking on the Size field header orders the message list by size, making it easier to find large messages.

Any messages over 500 KB will probably have attachments. You should consider whether or not you need to keep the attachment with the message, as saving it and then deleting it from the message (or simply deleting it from the message if you already have a copy of the file) will release space on your Mailbox.

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Delete Unwanted Mail Messages

You should also regularly check to see if you have unwanted messages in your Inbox, subfolders and Sent Items folder, and delete any you no longer need to keep.
Deleting unwanted email messages is an excellent way to reduce the size of your mailbox, and helps make the best use of resources.

To delete unwanted mail messages:
1. From the Inbox, Sent Items or other Outlook mail folder, select the messages you want to delete:

Individual messages:	click on the message you wish to delete
Multiple contiguous messages:	click on the first message you wish to delete, hold down the [Shift] key and click on the last message you wish to delete, before releasing the [Shift] key.
Multiple non-contiguous messages :	click on the first message you wish to delete, hold down the [Ctrl] key and click on each of the other messages you wish to delete, before releasing the [Ctrl] key.

2. Press the Delete key.

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Archive your mail messages

Archived email is still very easily accessible through the Exchange system, which means you can work with it in the same way that you would work with email in your Mailbox.

Because archived mail is stored differently, however, it does not affect the performance of the School’s Exchange servers and does not count against your normal Mailbox quota.

To archive email using drag and drop:

1. From the Inbox, Sent Items or other Outlook mail folder, click on the message or messages you want to archive.  This will select the message(s).
2. Drag and drop them into your Personal Folders or your Archive Folders.  You can also archive entire subfolders using drag and drop.

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Work with Archived Mail Messages

Even though archived mail messages are stored in a different location to mailbox messages, you can still work with them in exactly the same way.

To work with archived mail messages:
1. If necessary, in the Navigation Pane display the Folder List.
2. Click on Personal Folders or Archive Folders to display the archived messages.
3. Open archived mail messages in the normal way, reply to them, forward them, etc. Your sent messages will go in your Sent Items folder, as usual.

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Delete Archived Mail Messages

You should regularly check to see if you have unwanted archived messages, and delete any you no longer need to keep.

To delete archived messages:

1. From the Personal Folders Folders or Archive Folders, select the messages you want to delete.

2. Press the [Delete] key. When you delete messages from your Mailbox, they are permanently deleted by default when you exit Outlook. However, when you delete archived messages, they are moved to a special Deleted Items folder that is in your Personal Folders or Archive Folders. If you wish to permanently delete these items, you must empty the Deleted Items folder.

3. Click on the + sign next to the Personal Folders or Archive Folders to display the Deleted Items folder plus any other subfolders.


 

4. Right-click on the Deleted Items folder to display the shortcut menu.
5. On the shortcut menu, click on Empty “Deleted Items” Folder to empty the Deleted Items folder for archived messages.

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Compact your Archive File

Permanently deleting archived messages does not free up any space on your archive file. In order to reclaim the space, you must compact your Archive file.

To compact your archive file:

1. Right-click on Personal Folders or Archive Folders to display the shortcut menu.

2. On the shortcut menu click on Properties for Personal Folders/Archive Folders to display the Properties dialog box.

3. Click on the Advanced button to display the Advanced dialog box.

4. Click on the Compact Now button to compact your archive file.
5. Click on the OK button to close the Advanced dialog box.
6. Click on the OK button to close the Properties dialog box.

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