What do I do if I go over my mail quota?

If your administrator has set a quota for the size of your mail, and your mail application becomes larger than the limit, you will start to see warning messages that you are over quota. In addition, new mail arriving for you may be delayed, and you will not be able to save sent mail.

If a quota is set, a horizontal bar displays near the top of the mail navigator, indicating the amount of disk space used for mail. To get more information about your mail quota, you can hover over the indicator or choose Tools > Quota Information.

What you can do

  • Delete mail. Sort individual mail folders and views by size to identify and delete the largest messages you no longer need. After deleting messages, make sure that you go to the Trash folder and empty trash.
  • Archive mail. Note that you cannot create a mail archive while your mail quota is exceeded, but once you have gotten under quota, creating a mail archive can further reduce the size of your mail.
  • Change your preference for saving sent mail (For instructions, see Mail Quick reference). For example, if your preference is set to Always, you may be saving many messages unnecessarily. Consider changing the setting to Always prompt, so you can think about whether you really need to save each message.
  • If your sent mail is automatically saved, use the Reply or Reply with History Only option when you reply to messages that contain file attachments.