Published on 12, July, 2020
I have a Hotmail (Outlook) account for my email and I’ve went on their main website (email webpage) because I’m getting notifications in the app that my email inbox is over 90% full but many of the tools on their main page such as sweep and sorting emails for management and deletion of junk email are useless, as I have a lot of emails that I do need to keep - I’ve done a search but I can’t seem to find any good software, apps, programs, extensions (free or paid) that are compatible with Outlook/Hotmail - I’m not the most disciplined person with deleting unwanted emails as quickly as possible but I’m still looking for some better email management solutions - I’d love a program that would allow me to do a scan for potentially unwanted emails (that would also sync with Outlook/Hotmail’s main servers) with tick-boxes to allow me to keep wanted/needed emails and just delete the rest - although it’s a personal account (and I don’t want to buy more storage) I’m wondering if there was anything for business email management to sort out the sheer volume of emails I currently have in my inbox and POP folders?
Once you are running out of space then the simplest solution is to create a local data file for Outlook to use and move old messages into there. This sort of file is called a PST file and instructions to set it up are here (I just tested and it works)
https://mailboxinsights.com/how-to-create-a-pst-file-in-outlook/
You need to back this up regularly and note that it will get quite large so an external hard disk would be a sensible backup solution.
IrishInManchesterUK said:I’d love a program that would allow me to do a scan for potentially unwanted emails (that would also sync with Outlook/Hotmail’s main servers)
The simplest solution is already built into Outlook and is called Rules.
There is a guide to them here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-email-messages-by-using-rules-c24f5dea-9465-4df4-ad17-a50704d66c59
It takes a bit of thinking through the logic to get them setup but thereafter they are automatic if you set them to be.
My approach is to use rules to move stuff to different folders in my online email then manually archive the messages every few months.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/archive-older-items-automatically-25f44f07-9b80-4107-841c-41dc38296667
You can turn on Auto Archving and keep some of the data on the PC but it's a risk, if your PC dies then they're gone
I have the same problem. It USED to be that you could download/empty your hotmail accunt into a local client but they seemed to have stopped that about 15 years ago, FORCING you to use online storage, AKA the cloud.
please let us know if you find a quick solution.
Thing is, I’d prefer not to buy any more online storage
Buy an Microsoft 365 subscription for the account, it'll increase the storage from 5GB to 50GB, plus give you 1TB for file storage / desktop backup.
www.microsoft.com/.../compare-all-microsoft-365-products
Thanks very much for the link Bunny - I’ve posted a question on there so hopefully I’ll get some answers soon
It might be worth asking your question in the official Outlook support forum - plenty of techies there :)
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum?sort=LastReplyDate&dir=Desc&tab=All&status=all&mod=&modAge=&advFil=&postedAfter=&postedBefore=&threadType=All&isFilterExpanded=true&page=1