Microsoft Outlook 2007 provides a number of ways to use, store and archive email. These features were designed with many different uses in mind. Some features are more effective depending on the environment Outlook is being used in. At SPU, Outlook 2007 with all of your messages stored on the Exchange Server is a rebust and reliable email configuration. This will keep your local Outlook application in touch with the SPU email servers frequently, providing the best reliability, best chance your email will be delivered on a timely basis, and the best opportunity for our systems to be able to restore lost data. This also means that you must manage your email storage space.

SPU server space is not unlimited and each user has an established email disk quota. For many students and staff their Exchange email quota is sufficient to send and receive all of their email. Depending on how much email you send, how long you want messages stored, and how big those message are -- you may need to perform routine mailbox cleanup, or another type of archiving. Graphics intensive email, long reply chains and email attachments all take up room from your allotted space on the server. Attachments and pictures may be saved to your local computer so they can be removed from your email account storage limits.

Another alternative if you are using Outlook 2007 is to move some of your messages to a Personal/Offline storage location (with a .PST file). Review the Personal/Offline Folders for more information on this option.

It's easy to remove space intensive pictures or attachments from an email message to store them on your computer disk drive. Open an individual email message with attachments or pictures, right-click on the item you wish to save and use the Save As feature to save it to a location on your hard drive. Generally, the My Documents folder is a good location to save personal items into.

Individual files that are saved to your personally owned local computer will not be available from other computer. Be sure to prioritize which items you retain in your Inbox or Inbox subfolders so they are available from other email access points (e.g. webmail, other computers from which Outlook is configured for your email account).

If other computers are configured to check your email account via configurations other then Exchange, they may download email messages (and attachments) to the local storage of that computer. Those items will then no longer be available from computers where Outlook is configured for Exchange or from other email access point.

Storage Limits and Quotas (email and file space options)