Managing Your Mailbox
Your McCombs mailbox has a size limit. When you reach that limit, you will not be able to send or receive email until you reduce your mailbox size.
Mailbox Size Limits:
- Students - 100 MB
- Faculty and Staff - 200 MB
The following videos cover tools that will help you manage your mailbox in Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007.
What is on the Server?
Everything stored on the server counts against your mailbox size limit. So, to understand how to manage your mailbox size, it helps to know what is stored on the server. Watch the video below for an explanation.
Video - What is on the Server (2 min)
Some computers are configured to use Cached Exchange Mode. The video below will tell you what Cached Exchange Mode is, and how to check and see if you are using it.
Video - Cached Exchange Mode (1.5 min)
Checking Your Mailbox Size
If you don't want to exceed your mailbox size limit, it helps to know what size your mailbox currently is. Watch the video below to learn how to check your mailbox size in Outlook 2003, 2007, and Outlook Web Access.
Video - Checking Your Mailbox Size (2 min)
Deleting Email
One simple way to avoid exceeding your mailbox limit is to delete email that you no longer need. The videos below will show you how to delete multiple emails, bypass the Deleted Items folder, manage your Deleted Items folder, delete attachments, and recover Deleted Items if necessary.
Video - Deleting Email and Other Items (3 min)
Video - Managing the Deleted Items Folder (2.5 min)
Moving Email Offline
If you want to save email, and you are in danger of exceeding your mailbox limit, the only other option is to move some of your email offline.
Video - Offline Email Folders (5 min)
AutoArchiving
Auto-Archive is a feature in Outlook that automates moving email offline. It is very helpful if you have trouble remembering to move email offline.
Video - AutoArchive (5 min)
Backing Up
If you have saved emails to the hard drive of your computer, you will need to include your offline email file when you back up the important files on your computer. You will need to close Outlook before you back up your offline email file. To back it up, you will just navigate to the file on your computer, copy it, and paste it to the drive of another physical location. This can be a CD that you burn, a USB drive, or an external hard drive.
Please note: If your email contains sensitive data, you will need to be careful to secure whatever it is you back up to. You should not backup anything confidential to a USB drive, as those are easy to lose or steal. All sensitive data should be secured at all times.
If you have an offline email folder, and do not know where it is saved, read the Outlook Personal Folders article on the Tech Help Wiki.
Opening Your Offline Email in Outlook
You cannot navigate to your offline email file (ie PST file, Personal Folder, or Archive file) and double click to open it. You must open this file in Outlook.
To do so in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007:
- Open Outlook.
- Go to the File menu and hover your mouse over Open.
- From the menu that opens to the right, select Outlook Data File.
- In the dialog box that opens, navigate to your offline email file (.PST file) and select it.
- Click the Open button.
- Your offline email folder will appear in the folder list on the left side of your Outlook window.
Avoid Sending Attachments
Mailboxes often exceed their size limit because they are full of attachments. One way to help keep your mailbox size under its limit, and to help your friends and coworkers, is to avoid sending attachments. Here are a few ideas on how to avoid sending attachments:
- Send attachments to SharePoint (for students, My Site). Read the Training Team's blog post about this for instructions.
- Use shared network drives, Web Space, SharePoint (for faculty and staff), and My Sites (for students) to share documents.
- Use Microsoft Office Groove to collaborate on projects.
