It Tips – New Year, New Start!

Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and new year! I decided to wait until the end of the holiday season for the next IT Tips update. The absence of this publication must have had everyone yearning for the next IT literary masterpiece!!

 It’s a new year and a new start for all of us. This is the perfect time to do some cleanup on your computer! Let’s talk a little bit about cleaning up your email.

A tidy mailbox is good for everyone. Outlook will run faster and best of all, the servers will be happy! J A happy server is like a child’s laughter. Trust me.

There are many different ways to clean up your mailbox. The first thing you can do is look for large unnecessary email. This is a very simple task.

Delete large unnecessary email:

Look at the left side navigation pane click the + next to ‘Search Folders’.

Click the ‘Large Mail’ folder. That will display all larger than normal messages. Deleting large email that you do not need can be very helpful to your Outlook performance.

Empty your deleted items:

Don’t forget to empty your Deleted Items folder periodically! Even though you deleted them they’re still sitting there in your mail file.

To delete items permanently right click on the folder and choose ‘Empty “Deleted Items” Folder’.

Archiving:

The Microsoft gods have created archiving for those of you that want a more large scale approach. Archiving is a little more advanced than manually picking through email. However, archiving is much more efficient.

I like to archive big chunks of old email at the beginning of a new year. You can choose whichever timing you like.

From Outlook click File then Archive:

You are now presented with the archive window. Choose your archive criteria. My example below will create an archive file with all of my folders from July of last year back:

 

After you’ve selected your criteria click OK. You will see a message at the bottom of Outlook indicating that the archive process is running. Once it completes the message will simply go away.

Upon completion your archived emails can be found in the separate folder entitled ‘Archive Folders’. It will look like this:

**Tip** Outlook will ‘index’ up to 3000 email items per folder. The index is sort of like a table of contents for your computer to read. Always keep the amount of email in a folder below 3000 items. You can look at the bottom left of the Outlook window to see how many items a folder contains.

Would you like YOUR question featured in a future IT Tip? The glory could be all yours! Simply email me your question and it could be on the blog before you know it!

That’s it for now. Have a great winter, drive safe and keep warm!

-Keith