Information Systems

Keeping Your Exchange Mailbox Under the Storage Limits

Mailbox storage space on the Bothell Exchange Server is limited for each user so that all users will have enough space to conduct their business. We ask that each user maintain their personal mailbox's size. Outlook will warn you when you are approaching the size limitation. Once that happens, you will need to begin archiving or deleting mail. To determine how your storage is being utilized, and what you should remove, follow this procedure.

Open up Outlook
Make sure you are displaying the folder list for your mailbox; if not, open the view menu and select Navigator Pane.
Right click on the top level folder (should say something like "Mailbox - Your Name")
In the drop down menu, select "Properties for Mailbox - Your Name"
Under the General tab, click the "Folder Size" Button.

This will give you a list of how many "K" (or kilobytes, 1024K makes 1MB. Each user is allotted a total of 100MB for mailbox storage) is being stored in each of the folders inside your mailbox, including their respective subfolders.

Once you have narrowed down which folders are storing the largest chunks of information, you will need to decide what to archive.

Attachments: these often take up large blocks of space, and save them to your hard drive or network folder.
Fancy text e-mails: mail with backgrounds or graphics can consume a lot of space to store the special effects.
Messages formatted as web pages: though not classified as attachments, these messages can become very large as well.
Simple text e-mails: generally these are only a problem in very large numbers.

Once you have done this, review the information at start deleting or archiving mail according to what you find. If you need help doing this, call the helpdesk at 425-352-5275 or e-mail help@uwb.edu, and they will help you.