How to Clean an Exchange Server Mailbox

While Exchange email accounts are typically given large amounts of storage space for messages and attachments, you might need to clean your server mailbox if you keep a lot of emails and find they are taking up a significant amount of space. The Microsoft Outlook application has a built-in mailbox cleaning utility that can help you better organize your Exchange server mailbox and save storage space.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Open the "Start" menu, click on the "Microsoft Outlook" icon and connect to your Exchange server account.

2. Go to the "Tools" menu at the top of the Outlook window and select "Mailbox Cleanup."

3. Click on the "AutoArchive" button in the cleanup window to have Outlook automatically organize your Exchange server mailbox and move old messages to an archive file on your hard drive.

4. Click on the "Empty" button in the cleanup window to permanently delete all items in your "Deleted Items" folder. Deleting these items will save storage space and help to clean your mailbox.

5. Click on the "Delete" button in the cleanup window to remove duplicate versions of email items. If you synchronize your Exchange account with multiple computers or portable devices, multiple versions of the same items could be taking up space on your Exchange server mailbox.

References

• Managing Outlook Mailboxes