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Tuesday 12 November 2013

What to do when the System Administrator says the size limit of XXXMB for mailbox [email protected] has been exceeded



If you've received an email from the System Administrator saying something like...
the size limit of XXXMB for mailbox [email protected] has been exceeded
...then  you will need to take action to get your email back on track by deleting some old email from your mailbox.

The problem here is that  your POP3 mailbox is not designed to store email permanently. It's meant to be a temporary repository so you can access your email when it arrives.

These days of course everyone wants easy access to their email from multiple mobile devices as well as their office desktop computer, but that doesn't mean you need to leave six month-old correspondence on the server. Sooner or later, you'll have to download it and archive it somewhere.

This will require some changes to your email software.

If you're using Outlook - and I've found that pretty much every one of my clients does these days - then here are some tips on what to do about it.

1. Begin by creating an "Archive" in Outlook.

Archives are kept on your computer, not on the mail server, so they do not count towards your mail quota.

Here's a video on Youtube that explains how to do it in Outlook 2010. If you have a different version of Outlook, you can find several similar how-to videos by searching Youtube.



2. Then you will need to configure Outlook so that it deletes old email from the server after a certain period of time (for example 60 or 90 days). I just did a bit of Googling and found this helpful page which gives instructions for different versions of Outlook (it doesn't include Outlook 2013, but you should be able to work it out easily enough from the Outlook 2010 instructions).

The bit you're interested in is where it says "Remove from server after..."

 I found this Youtube video that demonstrates how it's done in Outlook 2010. There's no sound and you'll probably need to view it full-screen to get a good view of what's going on, but if you follow these instructions you'll be okay...