How to reduce Outlook mailbox size without deleting it?

MS Outlook is one of the most popular and widely used email clients. It offers its users with some of most advance features and various premium plans which are suitable for individuals and organizations alike. Every day, users send and receive a number of emails in their Outlook application. The more emails users send and receive, the larger their Outlook mailbox will grow.

Evidently, it will affect the efficiency of the Outlook as larger mailboxes causes the application to take time to open and search, and most of the email providers, including Outlook 365 limit the size of your mailbox. Thus, when email messages grow in your mailbox, storage space gradually shrinks, and soon, your mailbox is too full to allow send/receive new messages. When it happens, it leads to ‘Microsoft Outlook mailbox full’ issue. Therefore, to get back your Outlook working efficiently, you need to reduce the size of your mailbox.

How to Reduce the Size of Outlook Mailbox without deleting it?

When you receive the message that your mailbox is full and is over the size limit, then deleting folders and messages can help. There are various methods to compact your mailbox and reduce its size without deleting it. Following are few methods which can manually reduce Outlook mailbox size.

Method 1: Use Mailbox Cleanup Tool to Reduce Outlook Mailbox Size

Mailbox cleanup tool is a native feature of Outlook which allows you to view the size of your mailbox and individual folders. You can also search for older or large messages using this tool to delete or move email messages to an Outlook Data File (.pst).

It is often found that the cause of large mailbox is large Deleted Items folder. The mailbox cleanup tool offers a button to view the size of your Deleted Items folder which you can choose empty to reduce the size of your Outlook mailbox.  Follow the step-by-step instructions given below:

• Launch Microsoft Outlook on your system.
• Go to the ‘File’ at the top of the window.

• Select the ‘Info’ section, click on Tools, and then select Mailbox Cleanup.

• It will show the ‘Mailbox Cleanup’ wizard, you can click on AutoArchive or choose ‘Empty’ to clean/clear the ‘Deleted Items folder’ items permanently.

If you are using Outlook 2016 and Upper versions then Follow the steps below to clean up your mailbox.

• Launch the Outlook App
• Navigate to Files, then click on Info, and choose Tools.

• Select the Mailbox Cleanup Tool.
• Click on “View Mailbox Size…” to check your current mailbox size.
• To reduce the size of your Outlook data file and mailbox, specify the number of days to locate and delete older emails.

• Additionally, you can decrease the size of the PST file by emptying the deleted items folder, viewing the deleted items size, viewing conflicts size, or emptying conflicts.

Method 2: Use Archive Older Messages to Reduce Outlook Mailbox size

Microsoft Outlook comes with an AutoArchive feature which enables the users to archive their old and redundant PST file items to exclude it from PST file on the system’s hard drive which can be used when required.

Following are the steps to perform the process of archiving older messages:

• Launch your Microsoft Outlook application on your system.
• Click on ‘Files’, select ‘Options’, and then click on ‘Advanced’ on the left hand bar.

• Now, navigate to the AutoArchive segment on the page, and then click on ‘AutoArchive Settings’. 
• In the ‘AutoArchive’ box, select ‘Run AutoArchive every ‘and choose the number’ of day(s)’ as an interval for Outlook to automatically archive the email messages.

• Under ‘During Auto Archive’ check options you want AutoArchive to do, including ‘Delete expired items (email folders only)’, ‘Archive or delete old items’, and then click on ‘Ok’ to save the settings.

Method 3: Use Stellar Splitter for Outlook to Reduce Outlook Mailbox size

The native Outlook solutions to reduce the size of Outlook mailbox have some limitations, which are as follows:

• Time Consuming: Manually reducing the size of Outlook mailbox can be time consuming, even if you are a technically proficient.  
• Risk of Data Loss: An accidental mistake in between steps in the manual method can lead to data loss. Since, the manual solutions are a little complicated, users might get confused in between steps, which can be risky.

Considering the risk, it is better for users to utilize automated solutions like Stellar Splitter for Outlook to reduce the size of their Outlook mailbox without deleting it. It is an advance tool, especially designed for the convenience of the users to split large PST file into smaller sizes to reduce the Outlook mailbox size.

The tool offers different splitting criteria, such as Date, Size, Mail ID, Date Range, and etc. for users to make the choice. It can simply and efficiently split the large PST file (s) in multiple small parts in quick time. Splitting large size PST file into smaller sizes make it easier for users to manage their mailbox data size. Moreover, smaller PSTs help in improving the performance of Outlook, and reduce the chances of corruption.

Following are the steps to Split PST file to reduce the size of Outlook mailbox:

• Install Stellar Splitter for Outlook on your system, and launch it.

• In the software interface, select ‘Drag & Drop to add PST’ file which you want to split.

• In the proceeding window, under ‘Select Splitting Options’ choose the criteria based on size, date, or mail ID or check mark and then click on ‘ Split’.
• In the same window, under ‘Choose Destination’ click Browse to save the file to your desired location,
• To split multiple files, create a batch file by choosing multiple PST files and selecting the splitting option based on date or size.

• Once everything is selected, then click on ‘Split’ button.
• The Stellar Splitter for Outlook then automatically split your PST file (s) into smaller sizes based on the criteria you have selected and save it to your desired location and it will show the status of your splitting process

Conclusion:

When Outlook mailbox size grows to the extent of its limit, it begins to experience performance issues, and users become unable to send and receive new email messages and this can lead to corruption in Outlook data file. To resolve the Outlook mailbox size issue, we have explained few manual solutions which are helpful but they have certain limitations like time taking and risk of data loss. It is therefore better to utilize a reliable and safer tool like Stellar Splitter for Outlook to split large PST files into multiple smaller files to reduce the size of Outlook mailbox. The software, in few simpler steps, can split the PST file into multiple smaller files while maintaining the folder hierarchy and its integrity.

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About The Author

Shelly Bhardwaj

I am a Product Consultant and is associated with Stellar Data Recovery from last 8 years. I write about the latest technology tips and provide custom solutions related to Exchange Server, Office 365, MS Outlook, and many other Email Clients & different flavors of OS Servers. Read More