How do I reduce my mailbox size?

Currently all Superia subscriptions have an allocated web space usage, this is more than generous for most websites with even the largest of sites being able to keep within this allowance, however some people don't realise that your email mailboxes also count towards your web space usage and if not kept under control can see you going over those allocations quite easily.

This article is intended to help most people out, however if you have tried the steps here and you're still over your allocated web space allowance then please get in touch and we will work with you to help reduce your usage.

To find out how big your mailbox sizes are, log into your admin area and go to Configuration > Email > Email Accounts. Here you will see a list of all of the mailboxes that have been set up, you can see how big each mailbox is in the account size field. You will then be able to see which of your mailboxes are causing any issues.

POP3

If you connect to your mailbox using POP3 then all of your emails should be downloaded from the email server to your local device, however depending on your settings what happens next will affect the size of your mailbox. You should make sure that in your settings you have set the emails to be removed from the server once they have been downloaded, if you don't have this setting turned on then all of your emails will continue to be stored in your mailbox on the email server and continue to eat up your web space.

Depending on which email program you use to collect and read your emails will depend on where this setting is, but here are some of the most popular, if you can't see yours listed then get in touch and we will do our best to help you out.

Microsoft Outlook 2007

  • Go to Tools > Account Settings
  • Under Name, select the POP3 email account that you want to change, and then click Change.
  • Click More Settings
  • Click the Advanced tab, and then under Delivery, de-select the Leave a copy of messages on the server check box.
    Alternatively you could select to leave a copy of the message on the server and remove it after a certain number of days

Microsoft Outlook 2010/2013/2016

  • Go to File > Account Settings > Account Settings
  • On the E-mail tab, select the POP3 account, and then click Change.
  • Click More Settings
  • Click the Advanced tab, and then under Delivery, de-select the Leave a copy of messages on the server check box.
    Alternatively you could select to leave a copy of the message on the server and remove it after a certain number of days

Apple Mail

  • Go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts
  • Select the POP3 email account that you want to change
  • Click Advanced
  • make sure that Remove copy from server after retrieving a message is selected
    You can also remove messages currently saved on the server by clicking the "Remove now" button.

IMAP

If you connect to your mailbox using IMAP then all of your emails in your mailbox are stored on the email server and you access them when you connect, unless these messages are deleted then they will remain on the server and take up valuable web space.

Some people don't realise that if you delete an email and it goes into your deleted email folder then the message is still stored in your mailbox, it just resides in a different folder, to permanently delete those emails and free up web space then you will need to make sure that those messages are purged from your mailbox, you can do this manually on regular occasions or you can get your email program to do it for you automatically.

Depending on which email program you use to read your emails will depend on where this setting is, but here are some of the most popular, if you can't see yours listed then get in touch and we will do our best to help you out.

Microsoft Outlook

  • Open a folder in the IMAP account you wish to set automatic purging on
  • Go to Edit > Purge > Purge Options
  • Under the General tab tick the box that says Purge items when switching folders while online.
  • Click OK.

Apple Mail

  • Go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts
  • Select the IMAP email account that you want to change
  • Go to the Mailbox behaviours tab
  • In the Trash section under Permanently erase deleted messages when select an option other than Never

NOTE: Understand that when purging deleted items they will no longer be recoverable.

Alternative Method

If you want to store your messages on the server without removing them, then you have some other options, the first one being that you can use as much web space as you want, however you will be charged for any additional web space usage that goes over your allocated amount. If you would rather not have these additional charges then you could store them on a different server such as Google, if you have a GMail account then you can set this up to retrieve your messages and store them, thus removing them from your main mailbox, then rather than connecting to the mail server to access your emails you access them through your GMail account, you could still use Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail to access your emails but GMail would be acting as a 'middle man' and storing your messages without affecting your web space usage. At the time of this article GMail offers 15Gb free storage for emails, so you will soon run into the same issue again if you exceed this, however you could potentially have a single GMail account set up for each mailbox and have 15Gb free on each of your mail accounts.

If you would like to set up your messages to go through GMail then you can follow the instructions in the article for combatting spam found here

If this article has baffled you, or you still require further assistance then please do get in touch!


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