Oversized Microsoft Outlook Inboxes!

You have been storing your mails for many years in your Microsoft Outlook. It has been working well, until one fine day, the software decides to fail you. Settings remain the same, nothing has been changed. Your antivirus software patterns are up-to-date and you are very certain your computer is not infected. You called your email vendor and they verify that your mail server is working fine. Everyone else in the office can send and receive email – all except poor you.

What has actually happened?

Do you know, if you store more than 2 Gigabytes of emails in your Outlook Inbox, the email client will start to act weird? You will experience various degrees of difficulty, ranging from retrieving emails, to sending out or even deleting some of the emails in your Inbox.

To prevent this woe from happening to you, constantly archive your emails. It is a good standard practice to manage your emails in different folders. Stop filling up your Inbox. Create a folder outside your inbox and store your mails according to function and purpose. For example, mails from Company XYZ will go to Folder XYZ, and so on.

How do you check your Inbox size? Simple.

For Microsoft Outlook: 1. Open up Microsoft Outlook, go to File Menu and click on “Data File Management” 2. Select “Personal Folders” by clicking on it. Then, click on the “Open Folder” button. 3. Look for Outlook.pst file. It should tell you the size of your .pst file.

For Outlook Express: 1. Right click on your “Inbox” on the left pane of your Outlook Express. 2. Click on “Properties”. The Inbox Properties Windows will appear and will show you the where the file is located.

In my next entry, I will show you how to solve the issue if you have already exceeded 2 Gigabytes in your Inbox and are already facing some issues.

Prevention is better than cure! Remember to constantly check your Inbox size and archive your emails in relevant folders outside your Inbox.

Eric signing off… do call me if you need some fanatical advice!