Email Cleanup - How to cleanup using Outlook Web Access (OWA)

Overview

To help maintain the integrity of Sault College's mailbox databases, as a college community it is important that we maintain our mailboxes over time. This can be either done using your installed Microsoft Outlook client or can be done from using the Outlook Web Access through the Internet Explorer (IE11) web browser. Other browsers do work for most features, however, Internet Explorer fully supports all mailbox actions.

Stage 1: Accessing your email on the web

• Open Internet Explorer 11.  The browser can be identified with this ICON.   
• In the address bar type: mail.saultcollege.ca (don't search for this address using a search engine)
• The address will change and your email account will be opened

 

Stage 2 – Clearing out Deleted Items

Step 1 - Empty your Deleted Items folder

• Right Click on Delete Items
• Left Click on Empty Deleted Items

 

 Stage 3 - Purge all Deleted Items

NOTE: Deleted items are kept for 14 days, even though they have been deleted, so purging them will help us reclaim the space immediately.  This is time consuming using the Web Email Client, Purging email using your Oulook Client is the preferred method.

• Right Click on Deleted Items. 
• Left click on Recover Deleted Items, this is found just underneath Empty Deleted Items from Stage 2

• The Purge icon is represented by an X and the Restore icon is represented by an envelope with an error
• You should see a List of Deleted Emails and an counter at the very bottom that says "Displaying all ### items"

You can Purge emails in one of two ways.

First option

1. Select the first email
2. Click the purge icon X 
3. Click OK to accept the message 
4. Repeat ... 

Note: this is a very slow method

Second option

1. Select the first email
2. Press and hold the SHIFT Key
3. While holding the SHIFT key press the PAGE DOWN key, a maximum of 8 times.  This will select a range of email to purge.
4. Release the SHIFT key
5. Click the purge icon X 
6. Click OK to accept the message

NOTE: This will permanently delete all these messages freeing up space on the email servers immediately.

 

Stage 4 – Cleaning up your Mailbox, and Archive Mailbox if you have one.

You only need to delete mail that you are sure can be deleted, ensure you keep mail that is required for College related work and retention purposes.

In the Right Pane of mail.saultcollege.ca you will see your list of email.  It may feel over whelming thinking about cleaning email using the web client but there are ways to speed things up.  The main method for speed up cleaning is SORTING and the SHIFT + Click technique similar in Phase 2 above.

• First Click Arrange by Date

This will bring up a list of other options for Sorting your email.  You can sort by using any item in the list but the best methods to speed up your cleanup are to sort by:

1. Date
2. From
3. Size

Example:

• Sort by From
• You can either scroll to through your list of email to find a range you want to delete OR type the first letter (or first few letters) of the name of a sender to go directly to that part of your list.
• For my example I typed 'bar', which brought me to my Barracuda Email Security Gateway emails
• To Delete all these emails at once: 
  1. Click to select the top email in the range you want to to delete
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the range
  3. Hold down the SHIFT key and click the bottom email in your range (The entire range should now be selected)
  4. Press Delete on your keyboard to delete all selected emails

 

Stage 4 – Cleaning up Archived Email

• In the image above notice your Personal Archive - Your name located in the bottom of the left hand pane.
• If you don't see an Archive then one isn't setup for you and this Stage can be ignored
• Once you open your Archive email please repeat Stages 1 - 3
• A good place to start the cleanup of your Archive would be to :
  1. Decide what your retention period should be. 
  2. Sort by Date (default setting)
  3. If you have decided that 2 years is your retention period, scroll down to locate the top email in that range and select it by clicking once
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the range
  5. Hold down the SHIFT key and click the bottom email in your range (The entire range should now be selected)
  6. Press Delete on your keyboard to delete all selected emails
  7. Once you've deleted all the email ranges you are comfortable deleting, repeat these steps by sorting based on othe criteria or deleting individually as needed

Thank your for taking the time to cleanup !!