IT Tips - August 2014

IT Tips – August 2014 

August? We have an IT team birthday in August. Happy birthday, Abby! You're the best.

 

 ...I’m not an apple-polisher… 

 

What’s Inside:

Tech Section

·         Mailbox Cleanup REDUX -- Outlook 2010+ Edition 

 

Mailbox Cleanup for Outlook 2010+

I must once again apologize for recycling content. Just kidding – I REGRET NOTHING!

I want to assure you that I’m not running out of ideas. Instead, I must update certain IT Tips because computer programs are always changing. It’s just how technology works. Software is always evolving and we have to stay on top of the changes.

Many of you are now using the new Outlook 2010 (don’t worry, those of you who are not using 2010 will be in due time). Cleaning up your mailbox with Outlook 2010 is a bit different than 2007 so I thought I would revisit the topic from the ground up. 

Why should I clean up my mailbox? Surely, I'll need that Amazon email from 2007 about discount pet supplies!

That’s a troubling response. First, I want you to know that I’m here because I care for you. Secondly, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you may be an email hoarder...

This is what your mailbox looks like to IT people.

In all seriousness, old, unimportant email messages are not worth keeping.

The number one reason for cleaning your mailbox is SPEED. The more bloated your mailbox is, the slower Outlook will run.

Why does an unkempt mailbox will affect performance, you ask?

Outlook tells you the item count of each
folder on the bottom-left.

1.      Outlook will “index” up to 3,000 items per folder. The index acts as a table of contents for the computer. If you exceed 3,000 items in any folder, it will cause performance degradation.

2.      Your Outlook mailbox is a database. Put simply: an oversized database is a slow database.

Another important reason to keep your mailbox clean is the mailbox limit. The system has a limit for how much email you can store in your mailbox. If you hit this limit, you will no longer be able to send and receive email. Obviously, that can pose a major problem when you’re trying to get work done.

OK, FINE! How do I clean my mailbox?

There are several things you can do and it’s best to do these things in a specific order: remove old junk first, then archive. This order is important because it would be a bit silly to archive junk, wouldn't it?

It’s best to delete the old junk that you don’t need, and then archive the stuff worth keeping.

Let’s start!

Step one: Empty your deleted items!!

First and foremost, empty your Deleted Items folder! You may not realize it, but when you delete an email in Outlook, it’s not removed permanently. Outlook has a special “Deleted Items” folder which houses (you guessed it!) deleted items.

The Deleted Items folder is much like the Recycling Bin on your desktop. Deleted email messages live there until you choose to empty the folder.

To empty your deleted items, simply right click the folder and click “Empty Folder”. Like this:

You can also configure Outlook to automatically empty your Deleted Items folder when you close Outlook. This can help immensely if you’re forgetful (or very busy!). Here’s how:

Click “File” and then “Options”.

Next, click “Advanced”, check the box next to “Empty Deleted Items folder when exiting Outlook” and click “OK”.

 

Don’t worry! If you empty your deleted items and realize you deleted something important, you can recover it by following this past tip (click me).

 

Step two: Delete garbage email!

Next, survey your mailbox for old solicitations and email blasts. You can do this by utilizing Outlook’s search feature. Searching allows you to isolate these messages and deleted them in bulk.

Search for keywords related to companies that commonly send you solicitations. For example, I get a lot of email solicitations/blasts from tech companies like Dell and Newegg.

In my Outlook, I can search for “newegg” to isolate all of these email blasts. Once I've got my search results, you can press Ctrl or Shift + left click to select multiple email messages and delete them in bulk. Please note: It is possible to get false positives so be mindful while you’re deleting.

You can see here that I’ve searched for “newegg”
and selected a bunch of them to delete.

More information about Ctrl/Shift + left click can be found here. 

Step three: Delete large attachments.

Every email message in your mailbox has a size; messages with attachments are usually much larger in size. Each email adds up and eventually brings you to the aforementioned mailbox size limit. A good way to shrink your mailbox is to remove large attachments.

You can use the “Large Mail” search folder in Outlook to quickly locate hefty email messages.

Simply, scroll down in your Outlook folder list to “Search Folders” and then click “Large Mail”.

You can go through this folder and delete old messages with large attachments.

What’s more, you can save the attachment to your PC, delete only the attachment and keep the email message. This way you can keep a record of the message and dramatically reduce its size in Outlook.

It’s pretty easy:

1.       Open a large email that you want to keep, right click the attachment and choose save.

        

2.       Now right click the attachment again and choose “Remove Attachment”.

  

 

Step four: Don’t forget the Junk E-Mail folder!

Most people forget that Outlook’s junk e-mail folder even exists. If you’re one of those people, there is probably a ton of stuff in there that you don’t need.

Simply scroll down to the Junk E-Mail folder in your list of folders, and delete the items you don’t need. 

 

Finally, archive the rest!

This step usually makes the biggest impact. Now that you’ve removed irrelevant email, you can archive the old stuff that you may still need someday.

Archiving in Outlook 2010+ is a bit different than previous versions but it’s not difficult. Just follow these steps:

Click the “File” button, click on “Cleanup Tools” and then “Archive”

We’re doing an ad-hoc archive so we want to leave the top radio button selected on “Archive this folder and all subfolders” (which is the default setting). This will archive the selected folder and all of its subfolders.

From here you can select the Inbox and it will archive your Inbox and all of its subfolders. Keep in mind: your Sent Items folder is not a subfolder of your inbox, so it will have to be archived separately.

Select the desired folder, choose a date range for “Archive items older than” and click OK.

In this example, I’m telling Outlook to archive all items in my Inbox (and its subfolders) older than January 1, 2014:

After clicking OK, you will see “Archiving” at the bottom of Outlook. When this message disappears, your archive is done!

You should now have a sparkly clean mailbox! 

 

Have a great month, everyone!

-Keith

Please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email if you have a something that you think will make a good tip. You’ll get credit on the blog for your contribution and I might give you a high-five