November 2003

System Administrator - Your Mailbox is Over its Size Limit

By Teresa Lightle- Computer Training Coordinator                            Printable Version (pdf)

Is this one of your daily Inbox messages?  If so there could be a number of reasons. One of the most common reasons is that employees are “sprucing up” their signature lines with cute little flags, smiley faces etc. or that they are adding stationary and backgrounds.

While these do personalize your message, they add bulk to each and every email you send. Remember every email item remains on the server under “Sent Items.”  It also appears to recipients as if you have sent an item that contains an attached file (the clip art), which it may not, and adds to the size limits in their inbox.  The Butte County Office of Education's policy is not to add backgrounds, graphics and other unnecessary additions to your email messages such as hot bars, and animated icons.  One simple clip art can increase the size of an email message by 3 times its required size.

      

Another reason you may be over your limit is you are storing too many attached files in your inbox folders. If you receive an email that contains an attachment, open the attachment and save it to your file server or hard drive. If you must save the message, delete the attachment and save just the message. You can also right click on an attachment and choose Save As.

Other tips to help reduce the storage on the email server:

1. If you don’t need it, delete it. Be reasonable about keeping too much information.

2. Empty your deleted items folder often; many are set up to automatically delete upon exit.

3. Don't forget about deleting messages from your Sent Items as well.

4. Archive your Inbox to your file server or hard drive.

Next month in Tech Tips…
How to archive your Inbox and create a path for easy access to archived items.

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For Questions or Comments about this newsletter please contact: tlightle@bcoe.org

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