Manage Your Emails

Did you know?

  • Emails that you send are more important than what you receive? As the creator of an email, it is your responsibility to determine whether it has business value or if it is considered transitory.
  • Microsoft Outlook has a clean-up tool that can help you purge redundant emails and quickly get you space back in your mailbox.
  • Your Outlook Calendar contributes to the overall size of your mailbox.
  • Delete emails that have no business value on a regular basis. Emails that have business value should always be kept and saved in corporate repository (e.g., SharePoint, network drive) where they can be properly managed and disposed of in accordance to Government of Canada legislation.

Consult the guidance documents below to better understand what to keep and what to delete.

Email Overload

How to determine the size of your email

Calendar Overload

How to determine the size of your calendar

What Information do I need to keep?

  • 5 Steps to clean your Emails

    Did you know?

    • When printed, ESDC has enough email messages to make it to the moon and back. That's 768,000 km of emails!
    • 25,000+ employees at ESDC
    • 6% of email accounts hold 35% of ESDC's Storage space

    Step 1

    Use Outlook Clean-Up tool
    to purge redundant email messages.

    Remember to empty folder deleted items!

    Step 2

    Triage
    your clean-up by starting with the largest emails.
    Use mailbox tools to view size by folder and determines the largest emails.

    Step 3

    Sort
    your emails by sender or subject to help you "batch" delete where possible.

    Step 4

    Keep
    emails with decisions, advice and guidance – they have business value!

    Save
    to a corporate repository (e.g., SharePoint, network drive).

    Delete
    everything else.

    Step 5

    Limit
    the timeframe you keep "just-in-case" emails.

  • How to determine the size of your Mailbox

    In the main Outlook screen:

    1. Select the "File" tab

    Outlook screen. File menu.

    2. Select the "Cleanup Tools" button

    3. Select "Mailbox Cleanup..." from the pop-up menu

    Outlook screen. Cleanup Tools, Mailbox Cleanup...

    The Mailbox Cleanup dialog box has several tools that can help you find and clean out unwanted items from your mailbox

    1. Select "View Deleted Items Size..." to see the current size of your Deleted Items folder. Select "Empty" button in that section to empty your Deleted Items folder.

    2. Select "View Conflicts Size..." to see the current size of the Conflicts folder. Conflicts are caused when the copy of an Outlook item on the server does not precisely match the same item in the local cache. These are most frequently caused by multiple simultaneous accesses to your mailbox such as Outlook and a BlackBerry. You can remove these conflicting items by clicking on the "Delete" button.

    Outlook screen. View Deleted Items Size..., View Conflicts Size...

    3. Select the "View Mailbox Size" button to see the size of all folders in your mailbox. Select the "Server Data" tab. The "Size" column shows the size of all items in each folder. The "Total Size" column shows the size of each folder including all sub-folders. While you cannot delete items from this dialog box, you can note which folders are very large and navigate through normal means in Outlook to find those items that are candidates for deletion.

    Outlook screen. View Mailbox Size Outlook screen. Folder size, Server Data
  • 5 Steps to clean your Calendar

    Did you know?

    Meetings and attachments in your calendar count towards your total mailbox size!


    Inbox

    Plus


    sent items

    Plus


    calendar

    equals


    your total mailbox size

    Step 1

    Open
    your Outlook Calendar.

    • Select
    • 1. View,
    • 2. Change View,
    • 3. list.

    Step 2

    Delete
    all past events and attachments you no longer need.

    Note: Don't delete meetings you still need in the future!

    Step 3

    Save
    information you need to keep in a corporate repository (e.g., SharePoint, network drive).

    Step 4

    Return
    to Calendar mode.

    • Select
    • 1. View,
    • 2. Change View,
    • 3. Calendar.

    Step 5

    Repeat
    on a regular basis.

  • How to determine the size of your Calendar

    The Calendar can grow to be very large, particularly if people include Word documents and PowerPoint decks with meeting invitations. Unfortunately, the default view for the Calendar does not make it easy to see the size of Calendar items.

    To see the size of items, from your Calendar

    1. Select the "View" tab

    Outlook screen. view tab.

    2. Select "Change View"

    Outlook screen. Calendar change view

    3. Select "List"

    Outlook screen. Calendar list view

    When the list view appears, if "Size" is not one of the existing headers:

    1. Right-click anywhere on the header row
    2. Select on "Field Chooser" from the pop-up menu
    Outlook screen. Field Chooser

    In the "Field Chooser" dialog box:

    1. Set the drop list at the top to "All Appointment Fields"
    2. Scroll to the bottom, click on "Size"
    3. Drag it to a spot on the header row
    4. Close the Field Chooser dialog box by clicking on the "x" in the top-right corner
    Outlook screen. Field Chooser size

    Select "Size" on the header row to sort your Calendar items by size. Find the largest calendar items. Delete them if they are no longer needed, or open them and edit them to remove large file attachments if the attachments are no longer needed.

    Outlook screen. sizes

    To switch back to your standard Calendar view:

    1. Select the "View" tab
    2. Select "Change View"
    3. Select "Calendar"
    Outlook screen. view tab
  • Outlook Clean Up Tool