Overview
The staff of Firelands Local Schools access email primarily through two methods: An Outlook
client on their desktop/laptop or webmail. The procedures outlined in this document will show the
Firelands staff how to determine their mailbox size, what counts against their mailbox size, clean up
suggestions, and archiving their email messages. All procedures have been tested using both Outlook
and webmail.
Important Note: For web mail, we ask that you use the Internet Explorer web browser to go
through these procedures as some functionality is not available in Firefox, Chrome, & Safari. To access
webmail from Internet Explorer, enter the address of http://webmail.firelandsschools.org/owa.
What Counts Against Your Mailbox Size
If you look in Outlook or Webmail you will see either “Mailbox – Your Name” or simply “Your
Name” with a bunch of folders underneath (Inbox, Deleted Items, Sent Items, etc). Anything that is
underneath “Your Name” (even folders you created), all count against your mailbox size. Also any
calendar entries with large file attachments associated with them all count against your mailbox size.
Any folders which are not underneath “Your Name” like Archive Folders or other Personal Folders, will
not count against your mailbox size.
It is best to review the section of this document called Determining Your Mailbox Size to figure
out your size, and if using Outlook, to see which folders are consuming the most space.
Determining Your Mailbox Size
Outlook
To check the size of your mailbox in Outlook, as well as the size of individual folders,
perform the following steps.

Select Your Mailbox
o Select where it states “Mailbox – Your Name”
o Right click on it

Click on Properties

Click on Folder Size

View Total Size
o The number listed for total size (including subfolders) is your mailbox
size. The size listed is listed in KB (kilobytes). This number needs to be
under 1048576 KB.
o
o
While checking your mailbox size, you can also check the size of your
individual folders. This is helpful when you need to determine what
folders are consuming the bulk of your mailbox size and need to be
cleaned up.
Click OK twice to exit all of the windows when done
Webmail
To check the size of your mailbox in webmail, after logging in hover your cursor
over your name and a box will pop up telling you how much space you are using. You want to keep this
number under 1 GB or 1024 MB.
General Clean Up Suggestions
Reviewing the Mail in Your Folders
Once you have a general idea of which folders you can clean up to reduce your mailbox
size the best method is to simply review which emails you absolutely need and get rid of the ones you
don’t. Besides the Inbox, you should make sure to review the emails in your Sent Items, Junk E-Mail, and
Drafts folders. Remember to empty your Deleted Items folder once you have carried any housekeeping
steps.
Sorting Your Email by Size
While reviewing the emails in your folders you can arrange the messages by size,
ordering them from the largest to smallest.
To do this in Outlook, click where it states “Arranged By: Date” and you should get a
pop-up where you can select Size. After the messages are sorted by size, you can click where it states
“on top” and sort it by Largest or Smallest.
Emptying Out Your Deleted Items Folder



To empty out your deleted items folder in Outlook, right click on the Deleted
Items folder and click on Empty “Deleted Items” Folder
To empty your deleted items folder in Web Mail, click on the Deleted Items
folder and then click on the Recycle Bin Icon
To set Outlook to empty your Deleted Items folder on exit
 Go to the Tools menu and click on Options
 Click on the Other tab and check the box marked Empty the Deleted
Items folder upon exiting and click OK
Archiving Your Email
Through the cleanup efforts, you may come across emails that you absolutely must keep. To
save these messages without them counting towards your mailbox size, you need to archive them.
Archiving consists of creating a Personal Storage folder (PST) and moving your messages to it. For
Firelands Local Schools, we have already created a PST file for each staff member. You should be able
login to your system and begin archiving your email.
IMPORTANT!
To archive your email, you must login to a district system – either staff-issued laptop or
primary desktop. You then need to access your email and perform the archival via the Outlook client
(Archiving is not done through webmail).
When you login to Outlook your screen should look similar to the following:
Notice how there is the Mailbox – Bryan Smith as well as the bmsmith_2012. Everything under
Mailbox – Bryan Smith (Your name will be there), is what is currently in your mailbox on the Firelands
Exchange email server. All folders created under it count against the total mailbox size. The
bmsmith_2012 and everything under it is personal storage (PST). Your personal storage file will be
username_2012.
If you do not have a PST (no username_2012) in your Outlook, please fill out a trouble ticket and
the Technology Department will assist you.
Since the PST is a file on your computer, you should only archive email from your primary
system – either your staff-issued laptop or the primary system in your classroom. Anything you archive
will not show up on other Outlook clients or in Webmail!
To archive your email you simply drag and drop the messages from your folders in your Mailbox
– Your Name to the folders in username_2012. You can do this one at time or select multiple and move
them. ONCE YOU MOVE YOUR EMAIL TO ARCHIVE IT WILL NOT BE ACCESSIBLE VIA WEBMAIL AS IT
SAVED LOCALLY ON YOUR MACHINE.
If you have any questions with how to archive email, please send an email to
[email protected]