In today’s digital day and age, it’s no wonder we frequently worry about the overflowing databases and their massive sizes. Even though plenty of services now often a larger storage capacity, but the problem of crossing the allowed limit is still prevalent.
Know About Your Outlook Mailbox Size
It’s seen no more frequently than with emails, email servers, and email clients like Outlook. If you are a heavy email user, you might notice that your email account server is getting close to the allowed size limit or that it has crossed it. You might even notice that the Outlook OST file (the file that contains all the emails and other items) is also getting large and is causing problems.
This post will let you in on some of the ways you can keep the size in check and to reduce some of it. Besides deleting what you don’t need, there are few other ways to manage the mailbox’s size or the file’s size.
If you don’t know how much size your mailboxes are taking, you can go to the ‘File’ tab in Outlook and click on “Info,” select “Tools” in the “Mailbox Settings” section, and then choose “Mailbox Cleanup”.
A note on why you should keep the size of your Outlook Mailbox’s in check:
Besides the fact that if your server’s limit is crossed, you may not receive any new messages (because there’s no way to store it), there are other most consequential reasons for massive databases. The most important is that a large OST Outlook file can cause performance issues. Keeping the files large often makes Outlook run slow and can even cause problems syncing data with the servers.
And now without further ado, here are few ways you can manage the size of your mailboxes:
How to Keep Outlook Mailbox’s Size in Check
1- Delete Unnecessary Stuff
First method is quite common and simple: Delete what you think is unnecessary and you don’t want it. Keep in mind that all deleted emails go to the “trash” folder and are not deleted permanently. Depending on your settings, they might be kept on the servers for 30 days before permanent deletion. This feature allows you to undo any delete action that you might have performed accidentally.
2- Move Data to Personal Folders
PST is a native Outlook file that can store data for you. Its full form is “Personal Storage Table” and as the name suggests, it’s the personal data file that you can help you tremendously in managing the size of primary Outlook mailboxes and the OST file (the file that can cause performance issues).
The simplest way to move emails and folders to a personal PST file is by going to: “File” tab à Open and Export à “Import/Export.” And then select “Export to a file” and click “next” and select “Outlook data file (.pst).” Click “next” again and select the folders you want to export to PST file. Set the location for the exported file and click “Finish.”
This will move all the emails from the selected folders into the PST file.
Now you can delete the same folders from the servers to free up some space.
3- Auto Archive your Folders
One of the best ways to always maintain a healthy sized database is to auto archive your folders and mailboxes. To set an auto archive system, go to “File” Tab -> “Tools” under “Mailbox Settings” -> “Mailbox Cleanup” and select “Auto Archive”.
But the above steps only auto archive once. It doesn’t setup regular and automatic auto archiving process.
To do that, go to “Tools” and “Options.” Under “Advanced” tab, choose “Auto Archive Settings” and set the time intervals to automatically archive the folders you want. You can also choose to delete the archive folders automatically as soon as they are archived, but make sure you know exactly what you are doing before you turn this option on or else you may end up deleting some of your important emails without backup.
4- Download attachments to your computer and delete them from the Outlook.
This is a great way to reduce size because the major reason for oversized databases is often the attachments and not the text of emails. There’s no way to download attachments from all emails automatically. You are gonna have to do that with each email separately.
After applying the above steps, you will hopefully have a reduced mailbox in Outlook and a reduced OST file in your database directory. This will make the performance of Outlook software much faster and smoother.