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TechnologyOutlook Express/Windows Mail Maintenance

Question: How do I manage all my emails?

Answer: If you are a user of either Outlook Express or Windows Mail, there is one maintenance task you may need to do occasionally. For those of you that like to hold on to lots of email, you may even run into some “bad” behavior if this task is not done every so often. I am referring to keeping a check on the number of emails in 3 important folders.

The Inbox, Sent items and Deleted Items (Trash) folders can be a problem if allowed to get too large. Deleted items is easy; if it gets too large, click the Edit item in the toolbar at the top of the program and select “Empty ‘Deleted Items’ Folder and that is cleaned. But what about when you have 300, 400, 500 or more emails in your Sent items folder or the Inbox folder? You may want to save items from either or both these folders for business or other purposes. The answer is to create additional folders in Outlook Express and move items to these new folders. First, click on “File” at the top of your screen and then click on “New” and in that menu select “Folder”. This will bring up a box prompting you to name the new folder. After you name it, you can either make it a folder under “Local Folders” or you can click on an existing folder to make it a sub-folder under that particular one.

Now that you have a new folder, you can move any items from any other folder, but specifically for maintenance purposes, from the Inbox or Sent items folder. If you need to move multiple items from one folder to another, use the shift key on the right side of your keyboard and the “arrow” keys immediately to the right of that shift key. By selecting an email with your mouse and then holding down the shift key and one of the arrow keys (up or down, as the need requires) you can select multiple emails at once. Then right click in the highlighted group of emails and select “move to folder”. You can then select in the new dialog box which new folder you would like to move to.

So, if you have much more than 200 or so email in your Inbox, Sent items or Deleted items folders, follow these suggestions to keep things tidy and prevent any “bad” behavior by Outlook Express or Windows Mail.

Written By Felix
Mother Lode Internet
Technical Support Team

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