Increase Outlook storage space

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING INBOX

Here's a common lament: "My Inbox is giving me the squeeze! Every few hours or so, I try to send e-mail, only to be stopped in my tracks by a stupid error message: 'Your mailbox is over its size limit.' I have to waste precious minutes pruning my Inbox and subdirectories while my boss does a slow burn in her office. Finally I'll free up enough space to send the e-mail, only to get the same error again a few hours later! I'm at the end of my rope. Can't my e-mail administrators just up my mailbox limit or something?"

Yes, Outlook seems to derive a cruel pleasure in hitting us with the "Your mailbox is over its size limit" error just when we're sending the most important e-mail of the day. All too often, we have had to scramble to delete messages, sometimes even trashing mission-critical e-mail in the process. And even if you have no e-mail administrator, Outlook can become unstable if your Inbox grows too big for its britches.

Here are a couple of tips to help chop your mailbox down to size.

1. Archive your messages.

Everyone groans whenever we make this suggestion, but taking the time now to set up your archiving settings will save you grief later. Just follow these steps:

• Right-click your Inbox or a subdirectory, click AutoArchive, and select the "Archive this folder using these settings" radio button.
• Decide when messages get archived and where to store the archive on your system. This gets your e-mail off the servers that are under the control of the stingy IT people, who are ultimately responsible for your out-of-space messages to begin with, and onto your local hard disk. When you're done setting AutoArchive preferences for all of your directories (and don't forget Sent Items), go to the File menu, select Archive, click the "Archive all folders according to their AutoArchive settings" radio button, and click the OK button.
• Once Outlook is finished archiving messages, check to see if your mailbox is below your IT department's size limit. Right-click Personal Folders and click the Folder Size button; if the total size of your folders is larger than what your IT administrators allow, tweak your AutoArchive settings until you fall below the limit.

2. Strip attachments from your e-mail.

Are you prudent about cleaning out your Inbox, yet you constantly run out of mailbox space? You might have a problem with out-of-control attachments. Average Word files might be only 50KB to 100KB, but they add up quickly if your colleagues send them day in and day out. Try Attachment Save, a nifty Outlook add-on that strips away attachments and saves them on your hard drive as they arrive in your Inbox. Attachment Save ($30, with a 14-day free trial) automatically saves attachments to the directory of your choosing and adds a link to the file in the e-mail. The program can leave the paper-clip icon on a stripped message so that you can keep track of your stripped attachments, and you can set rules for which attachments get stripped and which don't.