Outlook E-Mail Quota

Approaching your Outlook Quota?

Have you received an e-mail about your Outlook Quota? If so, you need to reduce your mailbox size before you exceed your quota. Otherwise, our Exchange E-mail server will prevent you from sending messages (receiving e-mails will continue to work normally).

Why?

Most often, large mailboxes result from you sending and receiving huge attachments like photos, videos, Powerpoint presentations, and scanned PDF's.

Solution

To fix this, either delete old messages from your Deleted Items folder (and empty the Deleted Items folder!!) or keep old data by Archiving:

Outlook 2010: File-> Info-> Cleanup Tools -> Archive…
Outlook 2013: File-> Info-> Cleanup Tools -> Archive …

Then follow the steps in the link below. NOTE: Choose an appropriate date in Step 3! The more recent the date, the more your mailbox shrinks.

Archiving in Microsoft Outlook

Big E-mails?

Want a list of your large e-mails? Click the Search Folders (beneath your Inbox folder) icon, then Large Mail. You can then drag those items to your Archive folder. Also, you can also delete large messages instead of archiving them, as explained here: http://helpdesk.cwsl.edu/components/default.asp?nav=faq.asp&body=faqs/em...

Checking new size

To find the current size of your mailbox, right-click the icon of your name / e-mail / Mailbox ( looks similar to Step 2 pictured above), then Properties -> Folder Size

What happens?

Archiving moves your messages away from the server and onto your hard drive (AKA the C drive). After archiving, you’ll see an Archive Folders underneath your Inbox folder. It contains "old" (as defined by Step 2) e-mail, including many messages with large attachments like photos, videos, and scanned PDFs. The archive file resides on your PC's hard drive, not the server. So if your hard drive (on your PC) crashes, you *could* lose the Archive file. However, N&S uses good quality linux-based recovery software in those cases to minimize the risk -- though the risk is real. That's why properly managing your mailbox is important. After all, do you really need ALL of those previous messages, jokes, music, etc? If not, permanently delete (meaning, delete them from Deleted items) or archive them.

What if I just want to archive specific files?

You can drag any item into your Archive folder manually. You can also use the Search Folders item in Outlook, located beneath your Inbox. Clicking Large Mail will show the largest items. Once you've located your specific messages by size, date, or other criteria, just drag those items into the Archive Folder.