Frequently
Asked QuestionsEmail Quotas
All mailboxes are subject to a quota. Anytime you go over your quota you will receive a message from the mail system advising you that "Your mailbox is over the size limit". It will also include your 1st stage quota limit and your usage*.
There are three stages (or levels) to the quota settings:
- 1st stage, you will receive email warnings that you are over your quota (these email warnings will include your quota limit and your usage*)
- 2nd stage, you can no longer send email, but will continue to receive it.
- 3rd stage, you can no longer send or receive email. Email sent to you will be bounced back to the sender.
The default quota limit for Email is 100MB (1st stage), with 150MB as 2nd stage, and 200MB as 3rd stage.
*Changes to mailbox quotas are not reflected immediately, this includes deletions by the user or increases by ITS. This is because it can take 2 - 3 hours for the information to synchronize between the Exchange servers. So even though you may have deleted a number of items from your mailbox and are currently below your quota limit, you may continue to receive warning messages until the servers synchronize. See below for instructions on checking your current mailbox size.
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Best Practices for Managing your Mailbox Quota.
Determine your current Mailbox size
In the top of the left hand pane of Outlook, you will see 'Mailbox - Your Name' or just 'Your Name'. Right-click on this item and go to Properties.
In the bottom left hand corner click on the button labeled Folder Size. Look for Total size (including sub-folders) - it is at the top.
Find out where your space is being used
The above method will show you all of your folders and the size for each. This is a good way to see which folders you may want to look at to free up space
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Empty your Deleted Items folder
Items in this folder are still calculated as part of your quota. Items emptied from the Deleted Items folder can be recovered for up to 60 days. To recover deleted items, open the Deleted Items folder and go to Tools -> Recover Deleted Items...
Take a look at your largest emails
At the bottom of your Mail or Folder list in the left pane is a heading called Search Folders. Open this heading (click on the + sign) and select Large Mail. This will bring up all mail larger than 100KB no matter where they are stored in your Mailbox. Email can be deleted from here, but sometimes you may just want to remove or delete the attachment (which is usually the largest percentage of the Email's size)
Send a link instead of an attachment
When sending an email to people with whom you share a network drive, just include the link in the email instead of the document. In addition to saving quota space (for both you and them), you can ensure everyone is working from the same file, and preventing various versions from being stored in different locations. Contact the Helpdesk to find out how.
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Remove or Delete Attachments
Attachments that you have received can be saved elsewhere then removed from the email, leaving the email itself. Attachments in your Sent box that you have attached to emails, can usually be deleted as you already have a copy of the attachment elsewhere. In Office 2007 Rich Text emails need to be converted to HTML before the attachment can be removed.
Add a size column to your Inbox
This will only work if you have your Reading Pane on the bottom and not on the Right. Open your Inbox and go to View -> Arrange By -> Custom... Click on Fields... Select Size from the left pane and click Add. Click Ok and OK. This can be done for any folder in your mailbox.
Use Text only for Email Signatures
You should consider creating your Outlook Email signature without using graphic files for the following reasons.
- To not clog your mailbox with a multitude of tiny graphics files. For example if you have 6000 messages, and each contains an 8 KB graphics file, that’s 8 X 6000 = 48000 KB’s or 48 MB’s, this is almost half of your default email quota!
- In addition to clogging other users’ mailboxes, the size of your sent items folder also increases
- On email systems where your message is presented in plain text, your signature actually looks better when converted
- We now have recipients who receive their email on mobile devices like Blackberry and Tablets. Opening attachments on these devices is not only slow but frustrating when the attachment turns out to be a graphic
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Try using Plain Text for some of your Emails instead of Rich Text or HTML
The formatting and graphics used in Rich Text and HTML emails will add size to each email you send.
Backup/Archive older emails
This should only be for Emails that you want to keep for possible reference, but do not need on a day to day basis. Archives are not available through webmail. ITS does NOT recommend that you use the auto-archive feature in Outlook. This feature can cause corruption of your email archive and lead to loss of data.
Please see our web page on Archiving Email
The 25 Golden Rules of E-Mail
This links to an external web site