Weekly eTip – Clean your email over the holidays

Question: I’m getting messages that my email space if over half full, so I plan to spend some time over the holidays deleting emails. Can you provide any suggestions to speed this process?

To gain back the most space quickly, delete your largest messages first. You may want to start with your Sent Items folder first and sort by size and start deleting, then repeat with other folders. When sorting by size you should see the largest messages at the top, which in your Sent Items folder usually contain attachments. If you don’t need the message, delete it. If you need the message, you can just remove the attachment with the Outlook client, especially since you probably have it already on your computer if it is in your sent items folder. Just click on the attachment in the preview pane or from an open message and select Remove. You also can save attachments from this option.

From the web

If you use Outlook Web Access (OWA), you will need to save the attachment to your computer and then delete the message, as you are not able to remove just the attachment from a message in OWA.

In the client version

From the Outlook client, you also can “drag and drop” messages to your network folders or convert messages to PDF. Then you can delete the messages to free up space and still be able to refer to later.

More tip

Learn more email management and productivity tips in Wednesday’s Outlook session at 1 p.m. in 8011 Wittson Hall. A “Drop-in Help” session will follow from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. No registration is required.