Cleaning Up Outlook Email & Calendar

Over time, most of us find that we have accumulated hundreds of email messages. In fact, many people use Outlook as a filing system where they maintain records of information and past communications. While we are happy to see that email has become such an indispensable tool, we would like to encourage you to make cleaning up unwanted email and Sent Messages a regular routine. We would also like to make you aware of ways to archive messages that you keep for strictly historical reasons.

Besides the fact that this clean-up process will allow you to work more efficiently, we have a very pragmatic reason for requesting that you follow this advice. Our Exchange servers manage all campus email activity and store all email messages, Contact address book entries, and calendar appointments. Currently our email storage needs increase at a rate of about 1 gigabyte (over a billion bytes) per month. We are asking that people follow these measures to reduce our space consumption.

Deleting Old Messages

Periodically, you should review your messages and delete those you no longer need. Deleting messages one at a time can become tedious. Use the following techniques to select several messages at a time for deletion. Once the messages are selected, hit the Delete key or click the Delete toolbar icon to remove all the selected messages.

Choose the Edit, Select All menu command to select all the messages in the current folder. To select a range of messages, click on the first message in the series, hold down your Shift key, and click on the last message in the series. To select noncontiguous messages on a Windows PC, hold down the CTRL key as you click on each message. On a Mac, hold down the APPLE key as you click.

You can also move selected messages to another folder by dragging them over the folder's icon.

Cleaning out the Sent Items Folder

Every time you create and send an email message, Outlook stores a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder. Unless you clean out the Sent Items folder on a regular basis, these messages remain on our server indefinitely. As a result, people accumulate literally thousands of messages in their Sent Items. In fact, messages accumulated in Sent Items are the primary reason for space problems. We recommend that you review your Sent Items every few months and delete any unwanted messages. Alternatively, you may choose to delete all Sent messages that are older than a certain date. Those messages you choose to keep can be moved to any of your email storage folders or archived using the techniques described below.

Cleaning up old Calendar Items

Hard to believe, but we've been on Outlook & Exchange now for over 3 and a half years. During this time we've all accumulated numerous Calendar entries. On a Windows PC, cleaning out old Calendar items can easily be done to regain much needed space. The following steps walk you through clearing out dated items.

Click Calendar on the Shortcut Bar at the left. Click the View menu command and choose Current View, Events. Your calendar events should be sorted by the column titled "Recurrence Range Start" so that the oldest dates are at the top. (If not, you can sort by this column by simply clicking on the column heading.) You will also see that your calendar items are grouped as nonrecurring events and then events that recur on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. To select a range of dated events, click the oldest appointment, scroll through the list up to the point you wish to delete, hold down the shift key and click on the last appointment you wish to delete. Delete the items by pressing the Delete key or clicking the Delete icon on the toolbar.

If you happen to accidentally delete events that you want to keep, simply go to the Deleted Items folder, locate the item you wish to restore and then drag and drop the item back into the Calendar.

Other Outlook Folders

Don't forget that there are other Outlook Folders such as Tasks and Notes that may require some clean up as well if you use them. Deleting completed Tasks and expired Notes will save additional space.

Archiving Email Messages

Archiving your email messages involves saving messages to an alternative file system. This method of cleaning your email is recommended to those of you who have accumulated a large number of messages for historical purposes. You may also wish to consider archiving your Sent messages if you find that you need to review some past correspondence occasionally.

You can archive email messages by saving them to either a text file or an Outlook .pst file. Both file structures will enable you to retrieve the messages from their archived state. Text files can be read by any word processing application such as Microsoft Word. Outlook .pst files can only be read by Outlook.

Once, you have archived your email messages to either a text or .pst file, you can save the file to a regular disk, Zip Disk, or CD. At that point, the email messages can be deleted from the Outlook system.

If you are interested in how to archive your email messages on a Windows PC, please refer to the information in eHelp.

Exiting Outlook

When you exit Outlook on a Windows PC, you are asked 'Are you sure you want to permanently delete all the items and subfolders in the "Deleted Items" folder?'. Make certain you respond 'Yes'. If you select 'No', the items in the Deleted folder remain on the server and take up valuable space! Messages in the Deleted Items folder are automatically deleted when Mac users exit Outlook.