Ask Marsha: Is it possible to overload my Outlook Email account with all the stuff I save?

We’re starting a new feature called “Ask Marsha.” So many of you have emailed me with individual questions, many answers which can be helpful to the rest of us.  Here’s the first we’re publishing, from “Roz”

Hi Marsha:

I have a question. Thanks to your wisdom I now have literally dozens of email files in my Outlook and save material appropriately, which is very useful.

My question is, can these files get too large for my computer? I’m at a point at which I have more valuable content saved in Outlook than in the rest of my computer due to the enormous email traffic I get daily. Can Outlook handle all this?

Dear Roz: The answer is YES, definitely. You do need to be cautious about overloading your email system. If you overburden it, you risk crashing the system, and losing everything.

The good news is that the answer may be easier than you think…

Most of the space used in your email is in your attachments. It’s been estimated that 85% of storage space is used up by attachments. Many of these documents have graphics, are lengthy, or are detailed. Additionally, many of them get saved, or sent and resent, so there may be more than one of the same large attachment in your Outlook sent mail.

So, the first place to clear out is your ‘Sent Mail.” This is the ‘low hanging fruit.’ Even if you don’t want to go through all of your Sent Mail, sort by those that have attachments, or by size, and purge the larger files, or save them to your hard drive…

Another best practice is to save the larger files to your hard drive. You can indicate the file name and path (where you store it) on the email. Again, it is relatively easy to find these attachments by sorting by message size or whether they have an attachment.

Other size busters include managing the email you send, to reduce its size:

• Use text instead of html
• Avoid VCards
• Avoid graphics in your autosignature
• Avoid fancy stationery

Let me know what you think, Roz!