Starting the new year with a clean Outlook
It's the end of our financial year today, we're starting FY07 tomorrow, and I'm tidying out my mailbox. I do this every year, to keep myself in some sort of structure, although my Inbox gets a bit chaotic for the first couple of weeks in July.
At the end of the FY each year, I move all of my folders into a .pst for the last FY, and I delete, Yes, I said DELETE the .pst for the year before (FY05). Not once, since I've joined Microsoft have I needed to actually return to one of these older mails. Moving all of these mails into the .PST breaks all of my rules too. So I delete all of my rules too. Yup. All of them. So I never get to that message telling me I've run out of space for rules
So for the next few days, my Inbox is inundated with mails, some of which are to Distribution Lists that I never read any more. So instead of actually archiving irrelevant information, I go and unsubscribe from the DL. I don't need to create a rule, and my mailbox fills up more slowly.
So I start the year in a little bit of chaos, but in a couple of weeks I'll be all sorted out, with a clean set of Inbox rules, less subscriptions to the DL's, and fewer mails to get through every day. It's a bit like spring cleaning (only in summer). I'm almost as brave as Allister really, only I do this every year, not every time I change my job. And doing this also gives me the chance to create a completely new folder list, and stop those annoying (customised) messages telling me I'm over my limit. At least I'm free of them for another 8 months.
Go on be brave. Do you REALLY need all those mails in your Outlook folders? Honestly? Go on - do some spring cleaning and have a fresh start...