If you use Microsoft Outlook as your email client then size matters and less is more.
With the growth of email, Outlook is one of the most popular email clients. With all this email you need a way to organize it. Outlook allows you to setup folders to manage the flood of email that we all have to handle. But if you keep every email it will not take long for your Outlook to bloat to the point that performance suffers and you run the risk of data loss.
In the days of Outlook 2002 (XP) and older if your Outlook file grew to 1.8GB you were hosed. And by hosed I mean you all your email data (inbox, folders, contact, and calendar) would become corrupt and unreadable. In Outlook 2003 and later the file size supposedly increased 10 fold. But allowing your Outlook to grow so large is like driving a Mac truck everywhere you go.
Here are some simple tips to help you manage your Outlook file size thus improving your PCs performance.
How big is my Outlook?
To see the size of your Outlook folders:
• Select Tools | Mailbox Cleanup… from the menu.
• Click View Mailbox Size….
• Click Close (two times) to close the mailbox size view again.
Get fid of the big ones first
In your Folder List Click on the “+” to expand “Search Folders”.
Click on “Large Mail” and you will see the largest email (including attachments). Start deleting from the top and you should be able to recover a lot of email space quickly. There’s no need to keep the email with the 4MB attachment of the cat playing the piano. It’s on YouTube.
Here are some tips for cleaning Outlook
• Every time you send mail a copy is left in your ‘Sent Items’ folder. Please check this folder for messages you no longer wish to keep and delete them.
• Delete messages with large attachments. Chances are you have already saved the attachment to your hard drive.
• Empty your Junk E-mail folder (right-click over Junk E-mail, select Empty “Junk E-mail” Folder)
• Once you have cleaned all your folders, empty your ‘Deleted Items’ folder. When you delete mail in Outlook, the mail actually goes to the ‘Deleted Items’ folder. By default Outlook does not empty the ‘Deleted Items’ when you exit. To empty the ‘Deleted Items’ folder, right click on the ‘Deleted Items’, then choose ‘Empty “Deleted Items” folder’. Saving emails in your ‘Deleted Items’ folder is the equivalent to saving important documents in your trash can.
Archive
Outlook allows your archive data to another file. This helps keep you main Outlook file size under control and still have access to your data. The following link provides a good description of the archive feature and how to use it.
http://kb.iu.edu/data/aead.html
If you do not think you have backed up your Outlook data then you probably haven’t. This means you could loose everything…well, everything in your Outlook data file. And in many cases, your Outlook data contains your important contacts. But Outlook backup is a topic for another time.
Need Help?
If you need help with your email and/or Outlook data, click on TechAdvocate Solutions and let us help you.
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