We are often asked to assist in resolving issues around full mailboxes. Our webmail service, Surgeweb, contains all of the tools that you need to investigate and resolve these questions at your convenience. Before we dig into Surgeweb, let’s lay a foundations that we can build on.
TIP: It’s easy to get confused with sizes of messages. Of the units you’re likely to see in Surgeweb, KB is the smallest. 1,000 KB make one MB, and 1000 MB make a GB. When trying to clean up your mailbox, getting rid of GBs and MBs will generally get the job done, but it takes a lot of KBs to make any difference!
Primarily, it is important to understand that mailbox usage doesn’t just include your inbox.
It is not unusual for email software to store folders of email (including deleted items or trash) on our server, taking up your storage space. Sometimes different programs or devices name the trash folder differently from each other, too. This can lead to situations where you think that you have emptied your trash folder, but in fact you’ve only done half the job!
Surgeweb provides a great way to check to see how your storage is being used, and gives you insight into how to resolve problems. The key is normally to use it to identify where the space is being used, and then to either reduce the usage, or choosing to upgrade your storage allowance. Usage reduction options include deleting unwanted email, or moving email to local storage (that is, on your computer or device). The most important feature of Surgeweb in this regard is that it works directly with our server and your storage, enabling us to understand clearly and quickly what is happening.
To log in to Surgeweb, look for the Webmail Login link at the top right corner of this screen. When you choose that link, you will need to enter your email address and password to log in. If you don’t know your password, please contact us to have it reset.
NOTE: We’d love to show you screen images from Surgeweb, but it has a number of different user interface options, so it would be confusing if we showed you them all. Instead, we’re going to refer to options and such by name, and give you guidance about where they appear on the Surgeweb screen.
Once you have logged in to Surgeweb, you’re taken to your inbox. From here there are two main tools for managing mailbox space usage. Start by clicking on the “Options” menu (top right hand side of screen), and click the “Folders” option. The size of each folder is displayed in the table. If they don’t appear at first, click on the “Recalculate all sizes” button. This overview gives a quick high level view of what’s happening.
From this list you can identify folders to empty or delete. Some folders can be deleted directly from the folder list (look for the “Delete” option under the Folder Actions heading). Others are special folders that can’t be deleted, but can be emptied.
To empty a folder, click on the folder name and you’ll be taken to the contents of that folder. You could delete messages one by one, or you can select all the messages. To do so look for the “Select” option toward the top left corner of the webmail screen, choose it, then choose “Select all”. Once you’re done, press the delete button which should be near the top centre of the Surgeweb screen.
If after cleaning up your folders you still need more space, you can consider taking a look inside your folders. Maybe you have some emails with large attachments that are no longer needed?
Generally, the best approach is to look into your largest folder first. Open up the folder as described above, or from the folder list at the left of screen. Use the message list to spot large messages. It’s easiest to do this is you sort the messages by size. Look for the “Sort by” option near the top of the message list and change it to “reverse size”. Now the biggest messages in the selected folder will be at the top of the message list. The size of each message is shown in the message list. Delete any that you don’t need, and don’t forget to change the sort order back to your preferred order (probably reverse date) when you’re finished.
Don’t forget to empty the trash folder after deleting messages. Just click your right mouse button on the Trash folder in the folder list at left of screen and choose “Purge Trash” from the menu.
If you’ve got this far and still can’t seem to make enough space, maybe it’s time to consider a mailbox upgrade. We would be happy to advise or answer your questions.