How to clean up a messy mailbox?

In Outlook, a function called Mailbox Cleanup consolidates several features that are useful for maintaining your default information store at an acceptable size. It will be very useful if you are running low on disk space or overwhelmed by out-of-date messages.

  1. Click "Info" on the File Menu
  2. Click "Cleanup Tools"
  3. Select "Mailbox Cleanup..."

    Select "Mailbox Cleanup..."

     

  4. A Mailbox Cleanup dialog box contains several mailbox management features will be shown

    Mailbox Cleanup dialog box

     

Feature 1

You can view the size of your mailbox by clicking View Mailbox Size... and get a handle on current disk consumption.

Feature 2

You can locate items older than a certain number of days or larger than a certain number of kilobytes. After you make your selection and click Find, Outlook launches the Advanced Find dialog box to help you search the entire store for items that meet your age or size criteria. This feature is a quick way to find really old or really large items that might not need to stay in your mailbox.

Feature 3

Clicking the AutoArchive button will move old items to the archive file on this computer. Be careful with this button, clicking the AutoArchive button immediately starts an archiving session.

Feature 4

You can view the Deleted Items Size or click the Empty button to remove all the items currently in the Deleted Items folder to free up disk space.

Feature 5

You can view the Conflicts Size of the alternate versions of items in your mailbox or click the Delete button to remove all alternate versions.

Return to Microsoft Outlook 2010 FAQ page

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