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Make Cleaning a Regular Routine

The disk space used by your email inbox can grow surprisingly large, especially when you receive a lot of attachments. A one-time cleanup is only effective temporarily, so the maintenance methods outlined in this guide are worth making a habit.

First, take a backup

During the cleanup, accidents can happen, resulting in the deletion of important material. Therefore, before you tidy up your email inbox, make a backup of it just in case. Instructions for backing up your email can be found here.

Don't focus on individual messages

An individual email message without an attachment takes up very little space in your inbox. To use your time more efficiently, focus on larger entities as instructed below, rather than individual messages.

Separate mailing lists into folders

1. Consider if you belong to any mailing lists from which you regularly receive emails.

2. If you do, create a separate folder in Outlook for messages coming through the mailing list:

• Click the right mouse button on Cabinet.
• Choose New Folder from the menu.
• Give the folder a name.

3.  Create a rule in Outlook, which automatically directs the incoming e-mail from the mailing list address to the folder you created:

• Choose which ever e-mail you want from the e-mail list

• Click the Rules button.
• Click Create Rule...

• Outlook will suggest possible rules based on the selected e-mail.
• Add a check mark, for example on to the senders address. Based on this Outlook will recognize the message from the mailing list and will move it to the folder you have chosen.
• Add a check mark to Move the item to folder.
• Select the folder you previously created to which you would like the messages from the e-mail list to move to.

• Click OK.
• Save the rule by clicking OK.

4. Check periodically the contents of the folder you created. Have you gotten new messages from the e-mail list?

5. Delete old messages from the folder you created periodically, or right after reading them. You can select multiple e-mails at once by holding down the SHIFT key. The deletion happens with the Delete key. This way the e-mail lists wont get too big and take up unnecessary space in your inbox.

Remove unnecessary ads

1. Think whether you get ads in your inbox which you do not need.

2. If so, remove yourself from the mailing list. There is usually a link at the bottom of the ad which is meant for unsubscribing from the mailing list.

3. You can create a separate folder for the ads, like you did for the mailing lists. You can drag the ads to the folder or move them there automatically by using the same steps as before. After this you can focus on removing ads later through your ad folder.

Seperate messages from projects to their own folders

1. Think whether you are in a project from which you receive a lot of e-mails from.

2. If this is the case, would it be possible to talk to your project team about a possible project ID that could be added to the e-mail headers?

3. The ID could be for example inside square brackets: e.g. [PROJECT THIS AND THAT].

4. When the team members add the ID to the header, create a rule in Outlook for the project. The rule will redirect the messages automatically based on the ID to the project folder you have created. 

• Follow the same steps which you took when creating the mailing list
• Use as a rule the header instead of the senders address. 

5. Once the project has ended create a separate backup of the project folder using these instructions: Sähköpostien varmuuskopioiminen Outlook-työpöytäsovelluksella

Order the big messages: save the important one and delete to unnecessary ones

Going through the whole inbox can take a considerable amount of time, even though the vast majority of the e-mails are very small. With the help of Outlook, order the messages, so that only the big ones are visible and go trough them. This is effective cleaning.

1. In Outlook move to the File-menu from the top left.

2. Select Tools-drop down menu Mailbox Cleanup.

3. Select Find items larger than.

4. Write to right of Find items larger than -option e.g. 5000 or 10000. This way you can define the minimum size of the searched messages in kilobytes.

5. Click Find...-button.

6. Click Find Now...-button.

7. Sort the messages from largest to the smallest by clicking the Size column header.

8. In your Z-drive create a new folder for the e-mails you want to save. in the example picture the folder name was given "big e-mail messages".

9. Open the folder you created in another window.

10. Drag the messages which you want to save to the folder you created. You can choose multiple message by holding down the CTRL- or SHIFT keys. This way you can drag multiple message at once to the folder you created

11. Once you have made sure that the message has been successfully dragged into the folder you created in the Z-drive, delete the messages.

12. Make sure once more that the messages are saved into the folder in the Z-drive. Once you are sure, click Yes.

"Package" the sent and deleted message folders

1. In your Z-drive create a folder for the backup of the sent and deleted messages.

1. Open the previously mentioned varmuuskopiointiohje instructions.

2. Select for the folder which you want your backup to be "Sent Items" / "Lähetetyt viestit".

3. Follow the instructions to create a backup in .pst format in the folder you created for them. Name the file, for example, based on the date and folder name so that it is easy to find.

4. Then do the same to the "Deleted items" / "Poistetut viestit" email folder.

6. Once the backup has been successful, delete the message from the previously mentioned folders. "Sent items" / "Lähetetyt viestit" it might make sense to leave messages from, for example, the previous 2-4 weeks in the folders, so that you can easily find the messages you sent last.

What to do when you encounter a problem?