Since I use IMAP to access my email on the server, unless I lose access to the Internet for some reason, my email store should be safe enough off premises.Note: For an explanation of IMAP and POP, click here. As for backing up my email, if it resides on my PC, it gets backed up with everything else. If a message has anything I think is useful, I copy/edit the information I want to keep to a local txt or docx file, then delete the original email.

If a message has nothing I need/want to keep, I delete it. For any other email, on the first day of each month, as one of my monthly system maintenance routines, I review the messages I have that are more than thirty days old. I keep anything related to bill payments and any other financially related email for eleven years.

I keep messages from friends and family ‘forever’. With that said, as my needs change over time, I cull my emails that I no longer need. I’m using just a tad over 1/3GB out of 15, so I don’t think I’ll have to be worrying about running out of storage space any time soon. Once you have things backed up, you can delete email to free up your space. (How you do this depends on what desktop email program you use.) Once on my computer, I’d copy the contents of the Archive folder to a local folder not associated with the email account. More appropriately, though, I might instead first back up that folder by using a desktop email program to connect to my account and download all the email using IMAP. I could delete everything in it to free up that space, if I wanted to. In my example above, you can see that my Archive folder is taking up the most space. This includes your Inbox, Deleted Items (aka Trash/Recycle Bin), Sent Items, and any other folders you’ve created. You asked specifically about the inbox, but all folders count. (Screenshot: )Īfter the Deleted Items folder, your folders will be listed in order of size, so you can quickly determine where the space is being used. Scroll down further for more information. In the “Premium” example above, you can see I have 50 gigabytes of storage available to me, of which I’m currently using less than one. If you have a free account, click on General in the left-hand pane and then Storage in the resulting sub-menu. You may need to scroll down to find the “Storage” section. On the resulting page, if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, click on Premium in the left-hand pane. Finding the space usedĪfter you’ve signed into your account, click on the gear icon near the upper right and then on View all Outlook settings near the bottom of the resulting menu. Besides showing you your total available storage and how much is used, your folders are listed from small to large so you can see which are using the most space. In settings - either in “General” for free accounts, or “Premium” for Microsoft 365 subscribers - is a storage indicator.

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