Outlook Express – the Importance of Email Management
December 6, 2009Terry Anderson is the President of Fast-teks On-Site Computer Services of Central Iowa www.fastteksdm.com
Do you try and save all of your old Outlook Express emails by organizing them into folders instead of deleting or saving them on your hard drive as a text or html file? Many people think that as long as they they keep sorting their email they can keep accumulating them.
Unlike Outlook ; Outlook Express has a maximum email storage limit of 2 GB for any one folder. A folder would be considered your “Inbox”, “Sent” or customized folders that you may have set up to keep all of your email from 2004 or to save all the pictures your family and friends send you.
When the folder hits the 2 GB limit Express stops you from sending and receiving new email and you may have errors trying to delete email to clear it out. When this happens you will need to go to the folder on your computers hard drive where the Outlook Express file folders are stored and start deleting files. The biggest problem with this is that each folder in Outlook Express, such as “Inbox” is a file so you loose all of the emails in it when you delete the file.
If your Inbox is full and you need to delete the file you have to navigate to “C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{GUID}\Microsoft\Outlook Express” and delete your Inbox.dbx (.dbx is the Outlook Express file type extension) if that is the problem file.
The best solution is to manage your email by making a folder on your “C” Drive, label it email (create a sub folder inside for each place you want to store specific email) and then create a link on your desktop. Once that is done save your important email, pictures and documents to the correct folder inside the Email folder. At a minimum you should review email for deletion monthly more often depending on daily volume.
Remember that your Sent folder also counts and takes up space and needs just as much management as your Inbox.
While these suggestions won’t fix every problem in Microsoft Express, if you manage your email it will make it a lot easier to use.
