How
To Determine Folder Size In Outlook And How To Move Email To A Personal Folder
Determining the folder
size
Have you
ever wanted to know exactly how much space your mailbox uses on the server?
By following the steps below, you can easily determine the total size of your
mailbox, as well as the size of each individual folder.
Outlook
2000/XP
If you
can not see the folder list, you must first turn it on by clicking on View
in the menu bar and then selecting Folder List.
In the
above figure, there are four main folders titled “Outlook Today – (Mailbox
-…”, “Personal Folders”, “Public Folders”, and “Tipworld”. Each main folder
has a + symbol beside it indicating it may contain subfolders. Using the above
figure as our example, the group of folders nested under “Outlook Today –
(Mailbox …” are located on the Exchange server.In this case, the sub-folders
located on the server are as follows:
Ex: In
the figure below, the Sent Items folder has been evaluated for size.
The total size of the folder
and all it’s subfolders is 11619K, which is approximately 11 megabytes (MB)
of space being utilized on the Exchange server.
To get
an overall picture of the size of your mailbox on the server, right-click
on your main mailbox folder {in our example at the beginning of this document,
it was called “Outlook Today – (Mailbox -…”} and select properties.Click on
the Folder Size button. This will bring up the entire contents of your
mailbox on the server.
In our
example below, the Total Size (Fld+SubFld) of the mailbox on the server
is 55645K, which is approximately 55 MB. In the window below the total size,
there is a listing of each folder within your mailbox and the subsequent size
of that folder and any sub-folders. For example, the line that saysInbox
37854K/41639K means that the Inbox folder as a whole takes up approximately
41 MB (this is the Inbox folder and subfolders under Inbox), while the Inbox
folder itself (not including it’s subfolders) takes up approximately 38 MB
of disk space on the Exchange server.
Moving Email from the
Exchange Server to a Personal Folder
Once you
have determined the size of your mailbox on the Exchange server, you need
to do some spring cleaning. In general, the size of your mailbox on the server
should be limited to 50 MB total (this means all folders and subfolders combined).
If your mailbox is greater in size than 50 MB, you should delete unnecessary
email and move important email to your personal folder on your hard drive.
Unnecessary
email is that email that you do not need to keep for records and that you
will probably never need to refer to in the future.Examples of this include
personal emails not related to work, informative emails on events that have
already occurred, and spam email. For more information on deleting unnecessary
emails from your Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items and other folders in your
mailbox, please refer to the article Spring Cleaning Your E-mail Box
Important
email that you wish to keep for future reference should be moved to your personal
folder, which is located on your hard drive. For more information on creating
a personal folder, please refer to the article Creating
Personal Folders in Outlook.
The first
step in moving your email to a personal folder may be to organize the personal
folder a bit. Personal folders have a 1 GB (gigabyte) size limitation, therefore
you should decide in advance if you wish to have multiple personal folder
files, as opposed to having subfolders within one personal folder file. A
personal folder is a physical file located on your hard drive as opposed to
a folder that is created within a personal folder.Recall from earlier in this
article that you can change the display name of your personal folder to customize
it more to your liking.
For example,
suppose you have status emails from “Finance Committee” that you wish to save
and board meeting emails from “Hospital Administration” that you wish to save.
If you know that these emails need to be kept for a long period of time and
that you will continually receive future mailings, you may want to create
2 personal folder files.Once you have created the file on your hard drive
using the instructions provided in Creating
Personal Folders in Outlook, you can modify the display name of
your personal folder (how it displays in your folder list inside of Outlook)
to be specific for each file.However, if you believe that the number of emails
you receive from both groups will be limited, you may prefer to create 1 personal
folder file on your hard drive, and then create folders within using the File
à New à Folder option in Outlook.
In our
example at the beginning of this article, there are 2 personal folder files
(physical files on the hard drive) entitled “Personal Folder” and “Tipworld”.
Once you
have decided how you wish to organize your email in the personal folder(s),
highlight the email to be moved and then drag the email to the personal folder.
Alternatively,you may click on Edit à Move to Folder.A window will appear
as in the figure below.Scroll to choose your personal folder. If you have
sub-folders created within your personal folder, click the + symbol to expand
personal folder and select the sub-folder you wish to move the email. Click
OK when finish.
If you
wish to move multiple emails, you can hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard
as you single click each email. This will highlight each email on which you
click.
Compacting a folder
Once you
have finished moving emails all over the place, ideally you should compact
your main folders to reduce them in size. To compact the personal folder,
right-click on the main folder (not sub-folders) and select properties. Click
on theAdvanced button and select “Compact Now”. The compacting process
may take a few minutes to complete.
Other ways to save space
All of the data
in Microsoft Outlook is stored in a data file on the server or in a data file
that has the file name extension *.pst or *.ost on your hard drive. Over time,
this file might become very large. Other ways to save space include emptying
the Deleted Items folder. You can also stop recording journal entries for
selected contacts. And you can choose to automatically archive or delete items
when they reach a certain age. Because files attached to messages can take
up considerable space, you can save the file and delete the message to save
space.For more information on performing these tasks, you can check out the
online Help feature in Microsoft Outlook by clicking on Help in the menu bar
and selecting Microsoft Outlook Help. When the help box appears, you
can type in your question and click the Search button.
As always,
please call our helpdesk at x5470, menu option #2 or via email at Shv
PC Helpdesk if you need assistance with this or any other supported problem.