Outlook Web: Cleanup Mailbox Storage
Either when necessary or when desired, you may need to manually clean up storage in your mailbox or that of a shared mailbox. This guide will show you how to perform cleanup tasks on email.
Before we begin, it is important to note that this process will delete messages from the target mailbox. During this process you will need to determine an age of messages where everything older than the chosen age will be deleted. Each mailbox is unique and receives messages at different rates. If you receive many messages and if they are generally large, you are going to have a different need than somebody who receives few or only messages that are small in size.
note: HPG keeps daily backups of messages within every mailbox and can restore any message you have received or sent. It is safe to select any cleanup range.
Cleanup Your Mailbox
1. Log into the mailbox by going to https://outlook.office.com or if you are using a shared mailbox, see this article if you need help logging into it through the web browser.
2. After you are logged into Outlook Web, go to settings. You can find this at the top right corner of the page
3. Click on "View all Outlook settings"
4. Click on the General tab
5. Click on Storage
6. You will see a list of folders starting with Deleted Items and then sorted by Size (Largest to Smallest). For each large folder you will
a. Click the Dropdown option next to Empty
b. Select 3 Months and older, 6 Months and older, or 12 months and older.
because I am working in a mailbox that regularly requires cleanup due to size and frequency of messages, I will choose 3 months and older.
c. Click OK when prompted. Remember that HPG has a backup of all messages in your inbox that is retained indefinitely.
7. You will see a message in place of "empty" that states the folder is Emptying based on your parameters.
Depending on the size of the folder, this can take between minutes and hours to complete.
8. Repeat the above steps for all large folders in your mailbox. You may run several jobs at the same time.
It is a good idea to run this process regularly or as needed.