Free up email mailbox space in Outlook



Are you getting messages, warning that you're about to run out of mailbox space?

Those warning messages are important to note and take action on, as exceeding those limits will disable sending and receiving of your email messages.

 


Outlook Desktop:

In the Outlook desktop client, choose File> Tools > Mailbox Cleanup.


Then do any or all of the following:

  • View the total size of your mailbox and of individual folders within it.

  • Find items older than a certain date or larger than a certain size, and then delete those.

  • View the size of your Deleted Items folder and empty your Deleted Items folder.

 

 

Outlook on the Web (Webmail) and the 'New' version of Outlook client:

Use Sweep 

  1. Select a message.

  2. Select Sweep from the ribbon.

    Image of Sweep Button Highlighted on the ribbon.

  3. Choose when and where you want to move email messages from the sender you chose. For example, you can send all messages from that sender to a specific folder (even your trash) for one time or for all future messages.

  4. Select OK to perform the selected action.

 

 

Create rules

  1. Right-click a message and select Create rule.

  2. Choose the folder where you want all messages from that sender or set of senders to be moved, and then select OK.

    The rule will be applied to all incoming messages. If you'd like to run the rule on your inbox immediately, select the check box for Run this rule now in Inbox.
     

    Note: Additional Rules customizations are available to help you manage your Outlook messages in a way that makes sense for you. 

 

 

Use folders and categories

  1. Select a message.

  2. Select Move to and choose a folder.

    Or, select Categorize and choose a category.

 

 

Clean up your inbox

  1. Select a message.

  2. Select Delete. Select Archive if you might want it later.
     

    Note: You can also right click on folders and perform bulk actions on those folders. Select Empty, Mark all as read, and Assign policies to choose when emails within a folder will get automatically archived.

 

 

 

 

Best practices to keep your mailbox lean

Here are some other ways to keep your mailbox size under control:

  • Store attachments outside your mailbox – As attachments accumulate over time, they can take up a lot of space. For attachments you want to keep, consider saving them to a team site, to OneDrive, or to folders on your computer.
     
  • Empty the Junk Email folder – Periodically empty the Junk Email folder to save your inbox space for messages you actually want.
     
  • You may see a folder called Archive in the list of your mail folders. That folder is fine to store messages in, but putting mail into that folder does NOT help to lower your total mailbox space.
     
  • The same for the right-click option in Outlook, that moves mail to that same Archive folder. It also does not help in lowering your mailbox size.
    ​​​​​​​
  • Only the options listed in above in this article will lower your mailbox size.

 

 



References:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-my-mailbox-size-792b521c-3f4e-404e-b436-9c197bad6f45
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/organize-your-inbox-9aea8ad7-883d-459b-a3ea-ae20f06cfb32#ID0EBBBBF=Web

 

 

 

 

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