Managing E-mail in Outlook

Background – How It Used to Be
With Eudora, most UCOP employees stored all their e-mail on their computers. (Since this was the default setting, few customers actually stored e-mail on the server.) Because we didn’t have capabilities such as accessing mail on the Web, we weren’t forced to make choices about e-mail storage, and so many people kept an enormous Inbox, used their e-mail program to file attachments, or didn’t move messages to organized folders.

The Way It Is Now
In Outlook, some e-mail is stored on the server and some is stored on your computer. There’s a limit to server storage space, and so all customers are responsible for moving e-mail regularly from the server to their computers. In this way, Outlook actually prompts us to make daily decisions to organize and manage our e-mail.

Quick Storage Facts

• You get 200 MB of space to store e-mail on the server.
• When you get to 175 MB you’ll receive an alert.
• When you reach the limit, you will not be able to send e-mail but incoming mail will still be received.
• Every 6 months, your deleted and sent items are automatically archived in the Personal Folders, unless you change the default setting.
• To check the size of your folders, go to Tools, Mailbox Cleanup, and View Mailbox Size.

Read on for more details about server storage, computer storage, and tips for managing e-mail.

E-mail Stored on UCOP’s Exchange Server
Every customer has a personal mailbox on the Exchange server that is called their “Mailbox.” In Outlook, any items that you see in the Mailbox section of the navigation pane actually are stored in your Mailbox on the Exchange server and not on your computer:

To see how much space your Mailbox is using, click Tools, Mailbox Cleanup, and View Mailbox Size.

You may keep up to 150 MB (150000 KB) of items on the server. To stay within this limit, you must regularly move e-mail from the Mailbox into the Personal Folders (technically a PST file), which are located on your computer. You’ll get a warning from the system administrator when you get too close to the storage limit. If you reach the limit, you won’t be able to send e-mail until you free up space on the server

E-mail Stored on Your Computer
Instead of storing e-mail on the server, you can store it on your computer in the Personal Folders, which appear in the Outlook navigation pane. E-mail that you move off the server should either be permanently deleted or moved to a folder within your Personal Folders. You can create multiple Personal Folders, or PST files, just like your Eudora mailboxes. Right click on the folder name under which you want the folder to be created, select “New Folder”, enter the “Name” of the folder and click “OK”. The new folder will show up in your Outlook navigation pane.

Within the Personal Folders, you can set up any number of new folders and subfolders according to how you like to categorize and organize e-mail. You can drag e-mail messages from the Mailbox area (e.g., the Inbox), and put it into the Personal Folders area.

Tips for Reducing E-mail in Your Server Mailbox

1. Take Microsoft’s online tutorial, "Manage the size of your mailbox."
   http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/CR061832721033.aspx. It’s about 50 minutes, at the most.



2. Empty your Deleted Items folder regularly.
   When you delete a message, it is sent to the Deleted Items folder. Thus, the deleted items stay on the server until you empty the folder. Setting up an automatic delete of the Deleted Items folder is recommended.
• Automatically, every time you exit Outlook: Go to Tools, Options, and Other. Under General, select "Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting."
• Manually: Right click on the Empty Deleted Items Folder, and click Empty Deleted Items Folder.
  
  
3. Create folders in Personal Folders to which you regularly move e-mail messages.
   Decide how you’d like your e-mail to be organized, i.e., by topic and by recipient, and set up a number of folders under Personal Folders to which you may drag incoming messages.
• Right click on Personal Folders in the left-hand navigation pane.
• Select "New folder."
• Type in the name of your new folder in the empty field.
• Click "OK."
• The new folder will appear under Personal Folders.
  
  
4. Establish rules (“filters” in Eudora) that automatically move categories of new e-mail to appropriate folders in the Personal Folders.
   For example, if you regularly receive e-mail from a listserv, you can set up a rule that moves any messages you receive from that listserv into a designated folder. You’ll be able to tell that there is a new, unread message in that folder because the number of unread messages will appear in parentheses next to the folder name. To set a rule:
• Go to Tools
• Select Rules and Alerts
• Select New Rule
• Generally you'll want to choose "Start creating a rule from a new template."
• Step 1: Select "Move messages from someone to a folder"
• Step 2: Click on each of the underlined values and specify who you’re creating a rule for and what folder you want it to go to. When you click on "People or Distribution List," you can either select someone from the GAL or Contacts, or paste or type in an address in the From field at the bottom.
• Click Next, and verify the settings
• Click Apply and OK
  
  
5. Archive e-mail in the Sent Items folder.
   Remove Sent Items from the server by archiving your outgoing e-mail. The archived e-mail can be stored in a folder in your Personal Folders area or in the Archive Folders area, which also resides on your computer.
• Right click on the folder you want to autoarchive, usually the InBox or Sent Items.
• Select Properties, Other, and AutoArchive.
• Select "Archive this folder using these settings," and specify the number of days, weeks or month.
• Select "Move old items to default archive folder" and click OK.
• Then run Autoarchive: Go to Tools, Mailbox Cleanup, and select AutoArchive

Note that AutoArchive is set to archive your deleted and sent items every 6 months. You can check this by going to Tools, Options, Other, AutoArchive. If you don't want this to occur, select these folders and repeat the steps above, choosing "Do not archive items in this folder," instead of "Archive this folder using these settings."

6. Filter Junk e-mail and empty your Junk folder regularly.
• When you notice a junk mail item in your Inbox, right click on the message, scroll down to Junk E-mail, and select Add Sender to Blocked Senders List. This will tell Outlook to automatically distribute any messages from this sender to the Junk E-mail folder.
• Review your Junk e-mail folder daily to make sure no legitimate message has been sent there by mistake. Then empty the folder by right clicking on it and selecting “Empty Junk E-mail Folder.”
• As an option, use AutoArchive to delete e-mail from your Junk E-mail folder on a regular basis:
• Right click on the Junk E-mail Folder
• Choose Properties
• Select the AutoArchive tab and configure the options
• "Archive this folder using these settings" (set # of days/months, etc.)
• Choose "Permanently delete old items"


7. Save attachments you want to keep to a folder in My Documents.
   When you receive a document that you want to keep, save it to a folder on your hard drive under My Documents and when possible delete the e-mail message. Try to avoid using Outlook as your document management system.
   
   
8. Learn to delete items as soon as you’re done with them.
   We all get “fyi” e-mail that we can read once and delete. If you want to delete it permanently without sending it to the Deleted Items folder, highlight the item, and press the Shift and Delete keys.