How to reduce the size of your mailbox

Although some will be more generous than others, most mail systems will impose some kind of restriction on the total size of your mailbox. If you’re receiving notices that your mailbox is full or nearly full, here are a few pointers that will help you bring down the size.

• Purge your Deleted Items regularly – As an aside, don’t use your Deleted Items as a just-in-case folder. Avoid tears! If you think you’re going to need an email again, store it separately!
• Don’t use your mailbox as a filing cabinet. If someone sends you an email with an attachment that you need to keep, store it on a network drive and delete the email.
• Delete the junk – That funny pictures email, that funny movie, delete them after you’ve view them! Stashing them in a folder for later viewing just hogs space and your life is too precious to re-watch old funny videos!
• Clean out your Sent Items – I can’t stress how important this one is. By default, Outlook keeps a copy of everything you send. Take a look at this picture. This is the Sent Items for a typical office worker where photos are passed around as part of the job. All those attachments quickly add up.
• To easily clear any folder of the big emails, click on the Size column header then scroll to the top. Now start deleting things. Be strong! Don’t forget to purge your Delete Items once you’re done.