Skip to main content

Is your email inbox full? It's time to tidy up

Do you have hundreds or even thousands of unread emails sitting in your inbox? Do you find yourself hovering over that delete button, wondering if you should keep an email 'just in case'? If your email inbox is well on the way to being full, you won't be able to receive any more emails and you could also be breaking the law. We had a chat with Support Operations Manager Dave Park about why it's time to tidy up your email.

How do email inboxes get full?

'It's really important to understand that with email inboxes, you don't get an unlimited amount of storage space,' says Dave. 'With Microsoft 365 for example, the standard email inbox is 50GB - but it completely depends on the types of emails you're receiving as to how quickly that will fill up. There's no way really of saying how big a general email is, its just understanding which email you need to keep, and which you don't.'

Dave says that there are a number of reasons that email inboxes can fill up, ' If you read an email and don't consider whether it needs to kept or deleted, and it stays in your inbox, that's taking up space. If you do that a couple of hundred or even thousand times over, then it adds up very quickly. If you're subscribed to email newsletters that you delete without reading, they go to the Deleted Items. If you never empty the Deleted Items folder, that email is still using the same amount of space - its just in a different folder.'

'Then on top of all this, you have the GDPR implications,' says Dave. 'Under GDPR,  you're not permitted to retain personal data for longer than you need it. But if people have email conversations sitting in their inboxes from years ago, there's a good chance that they aren't following GDPR guidelines.'

What happens when the email inbox is full?

'On Microsoft 365, when the email inbox reaches 95% capacity, the user is notified,' says Dave. 'At that point, usually people start to delete emails. The difficulty comes with a feature of Microsoft 365, which is Deleted Item Retention. This tool essentially 'keeps' deleted emails for 30 days, so that if you accidentally delete something you can recover it again easily.'

'The problem is, when you reach 95% capacity, and you're deleting emails on mass to try to clear some space, with Microsoft 365 the email is still recoverable for 30 days. So as far as Microsoft is concerned, all the emails you're deleting are still recoverable and therefore still form part of your quota. In this case, IT support engineers have to get involved and figure out a work around, and it's quite tricky.'

'Ultimately, as soon as your email inbox is full, you aren't able to receive emails any more. Companies then can end up paying more for a bigger inbox, even though it's more of a user issue than a space issue. For SMEs, to suddenly have an increase to their email costs can be an expensive prospect.'

What can users do to tidy up their email?

Dave says that many people don't organise their emails well, 'Setting up folders for different emails is a really good way of managing your inbox. If you use your inbox as a bucket, and have every email fall into that bucket, its incredibly difficult to sort through. If you can get into the habit of sending an email to a folder after you've read it, it's much easier to find and delete if you need to.'

Dave also recommends archiving, 'On Microsoft 365, each user is given 50GB of live storage (which is your main email inbox) and 50GB of archive storage.  If you think of your email inbox as a filing cabinet sitting in your office, archiving is another filing cabinet that is sitting in another building.'

'Archiving is a really useful way of filing away emails that you might need for later, whilst also making use of all the space that Microsoft 365 gives users. With Microsoft 365, you can even set up policies for your email to follow; for example, once an email gets to a certain age, it is archived automatically.'

Get into the habit of sorting your emails, unsubscribing from junk, archiving where you can, deleting emails you don't need and emptying your Deleted Items folder,' says Dave. 'A little bit of tidying, often enough, can go a long way.'

Tweet us @TranscenditUK


The Transcendit Way

Transcendit understand that when you choose to work with us, whether we're taking care of your IT, app or web development, you're trusting us with part of your business. So whether we're looking after your computers, phone systems or servers we always do things 'the Transcendit way'.

The whole of our team adhere to the same values, beliefs and policies - the principles that were written when Transcendit first formed in 2000. Whether you come to us for cloud services or recovery backup you can be confident that you'll always receive the same excellent service.

The Transcendit way outlines how we do business; following the same straightforward principles with every client and customer, regardless of how big or small they may be.

That means we get to know you and your business. We offer you a friendly, professional and efficient service, and we'll always be honest with you.
We understand that not everybody speaks fluent IT, so we try to explain things in a way that is simple and clear. We always spend as much time as is necessary explaining things to you.
If you need to talk to us about something, no matter how insignificant, we are only ever a phone call away – and we’re never too busy to make you a cup of tea and have a sit down with you in person.
We understand how frustrating it can be when things are late. When we schedule an appointment with you, we are there when you’re expecting us. If something prevents us from getting there, we always call you in advance to let you know.
Sometimes things can go wrong, but we never lie to you or try to cover something up. If things go askew we tell you what’s happened and how we plan to prevent it affecting your business.
We want you to continuously benefit from working with us. We regularly discuss your business and make suggestions for improving systems and processes wherever we can – but we never try to push you into a purchase.
When we quote a fixed price, that's always the amount we charge – you won’t find any nasty surprises on a bill from us. If you are paying by time and materials, we inform you if our approximations could change.
We understand the importance of privacy for your business and your customers. We respect the confidentiality of your data, and we will never pass on your information to third parties.
We appreciate it when you take the time to give us feedback. A system called CustomerSure records our client's responses, so you can trust that our reviews are from real people.
Find out what they're saying here.
Just a quick note to say how thoroughly professional and exceptional the service is from Transcendit. Over the many years you have supported us, Christophe and the team have always been quick to respond, extremely knowledgeable, approachable and pro-active. Transcendit offer a fantastic service and it is greatly appreciated. Many thanks. Martin Alderman, Fylde Council

Based on 12075 reviews our customers rate us 9.8/10. Reviews and ratings by Customersure. 09-October-2024

Transcendit are proud sponsors of CHUF, the Children's Heart Unit Fund.

Transcendit is a Living Wage employer
Transcendit is a Microsoft Gold certified partner
VMWARE partner
Vipre partner
IPCortex partner
WithSecure partner
DELL partner
Barracuda partner
Veeam partner
N-Able partner