Full Email

There are 2 ways that your email might become full and prevent you from receiving new email.

1 - Your email box on your email server (outside) may become full. In this case, senders will usually receive a "Returned to Sender - email box is full" message. In this case you need to clean out your email box on the server. Click here for help.

2 - Your Outlook email folder (on your computer) may become too large and won't have room for new email. In this case, email will arrive at your email server (outside), but you can't retrieve it on your computer and will usually get a message: "Your Outlook Personal Storage file has exceeded it's maximum size". In this case you need to clean out your Outlook email folder on your computer. Click here for help.

Full Email Box on Server

In most cases, email that is sent to you goes to a server outside your office. It sits on that POP3 Incoming Email Server until you go to get it. The servers have limited capacity and it's possible that they get filled up and then subsequent emails sent to you are rejected and an "Email Box Full" error message is returned to the sender.

When your computer connects to that incoming email server, it starts retrieving the emails one by one and then normally it will tell the server to purge them off the server, making room for new messages. The email messages will be in Outlook on your PC and no longer exist on the server.

Sometimes, you need to leave the email messages on the server. If you use a Blackberry or similar device, you need to leave those emails on the server for at least 1 day so that they can be copied to the Blackberry. If you rely on WebMail you might want to leave those email messages on the server for a couple of days so that they can be accessed when you are out of the office using your webmail. But leaving the email on the server too long can cause it to fill up quickly.

If people are complaining that they are receiving "Email Box is Full" messages when they send email to you, you need to check your Outlook settings.

In Outlook 2003 go to:

Tools > Email Accounts > View or Change existing e-mail accounts

Select the e-mail account a press and then

Click on the ADVANCED tab, and make sure the the following check box is not selected:

[ ] Leave a copy of the messages on the server

Save these settings, and then do a and that should remove all messages off the email server and make room for new ones.

If you have access to WebMail you can go onto the email server directly and see what messages, if any, may still be there. Sometimes if there is one large email message sitting on the server that can't be downloaded properly to your PC, then it may cause a similar problem. Click here for more information on that.

Outlook is Full

Outlook creates a Personal Folders file on your computer. This is where you Inbox, Outbox, Sent, Calendar, Contacts and all your other folders are stored. If it becomes full. simply deleting items isn't enough. There's a little more involved in free up space.

Before you delete too much, some people prefer to archive their email instead of deleting it. If you already have an Archive folder in Outlook you can move items there, otherwise you can can find information on setting an Archive folder here.

When you delete items in Outlook, they are not removed but instead are moved to your Deleted Items folder and still take up space. You must periodically clean out your Deleted Items folder.

Simply right-click the Deleted Items, and select "Empty Deleted Items Folder" as shown here:

After that you still may need to compress the size of your email folder. To to this, right-click your Personal Folders, and go to Properties.

Then click on the Advanced button......

Then click on the Compact Now button......

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