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Purdue University College of Liberal Arts

Information Technology

Conserving Space in Outlook

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The Purdue email server incorporates a database of messages which has grown to an enormous size. Since the server is equipped with what is obviously a finite amount of storage space, we encourage everyone who uses this resource (if your e-mail address is @purdue.edu, you're an Exchange user) to do his or her part to conserve space. Conservation helps to maintain reliability and performance.

How can you be a good cyberspace neighbor? Deleting any unneeded messages conserves space on the e-mail server. The methods described here help to reduce disk usage by significantamounts, quickly and easily.

How big is my mailbox?

Before you start, you might want to determine how much space your mailbox consumes on the Liberal Arts e-mail server. Follow these steps in Microsoft Outlook:

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Click on the orange file tab in the top left of the program on the ribbon
  3. Select Info from the side pane
  4. Under mailbox cleanup, you will see a blue progress bar of how much email you have on the server.

Check this value again after you've followed one or more of the tips below to see how much space you've made available to other users.

In this dialog, you can also scroll through the list of your subfolders. Pay particular attention to the names of those which use the most space; consider trying the conservation tips below using those specific folders.

Messages with file attachments

The single quickest way to reduce the size of your mailbox is to delete messages that have file attachments. One file attachment can consume the same amount of disk space as dozens, or even hundreds, of plain e-mail messages.
  1. Select the e-mail folder in which you'd like to locate messages with attachments. (Such messages can be located in any e-mail folder. "Inbox" and "Sent Items," in particular, might have more such messages.)
  2. Click the paper clip icon in the column-titles-bar at the top of the list of messages. (See the red circle in the illustration, right.) This will sort the folder by attachments.
  3. You may need to scroll up or down to find the messages with file attachments (those with a paper-clip icon), now listed together.
  4. Delete messages which you no longer need. (Alternately, open individual messages; select the attachment[s] inside the message window and delete the attachment icon[s]. This removes file attachments, conserving considerable space, while leaving the message itself intact.)
  5. Follow the steps in "Emptying the Deleted Items folder," below.

Sent Items

Outlook is usually configured to retain a copy of each outgoing message that you write. The messages are saved in the "Sent Items" folder. Many people rarely access this folder -- or at least rarely access messages there which older than a particular date. You might be surprised to see that your "Sent Items" folder may contain hundreds or thousands of messages.
Consider deleting messages in "Sent Items" which are older than a few months and/or which were written in the previous semester.

If you prefer that Outlook not retain a copy of each outgoing message, you may conserve space by disabling the feature with these steps:

  1. From the Tools menu, select "Options." The dialog should open displaying the options under the "Preferences" tab.
  2. Click the "E-mail Options" button.
  3. Uncheck the "Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder" option.
  4. Click the "OK" button.
  5. Click the next "OK" button.

Emptying the Deleted Items folder

Messages which you delete from any e-mail folder are temporarily stored in the "Deleted Items" folder. Outlook might not be configured to empty the contents of this folder automatically; some people are surprised to discover how many messages they have in the folder.

We recommend that you use the "Deleted Items" folder only for messages which you really won't miss if they're deleted at day's end. For any messages you wish to keep for potential later retrieval, we recommend that you create separate storage folders in Outlook; move messages from your "Inbox" to those folders rather than deleting the messages.

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Click on the orange file tab in the top left of the program on the ribbon
  3. Select info from the side pane
  4. Under mailbox cleanup, click Cleanup Tools, and then select Empty the Deleted Items Folder
  5. Select Yes

Archiving Email

  1. Open Outlook
  2. Click on the orange file tab in the top left of the program on the ribbon
  3. Select info from the side pane
  4. Under mailbox cleanup, click Cleanup Tools, and then select archive


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