Information Resources
The University of Texas at Dallas
 

E-mail General Information


As email becomes a more critical part of everyday campus life, the issue of how to effectively store and manage email is becoming an increasingly important issue.

As many of you know, IR manages the two email services on campus. One is Cyrus email (UNIX-based) and the other is Exchange (Windows-based). In both cases, there are quotas on how much mail can be saved. This is important because our storage capacity is finite and has to be managed in a reasonable fashion. Please understand that any attachments received through email also count against the quota. For example, if you receive a 10K email with a 15MB attachment, then you have used 15.01MB of your quota - not 10K.

On both systems, you get warnings of some type before you cannot use your email. At some point, however, if you choose to ignore the warnings, you will not be able to send or receive any further email.

Below are some quick tips on how to manage your email storage effectively. Of course, at any time you may contact the university Help Desk for more assistance at 2911.

Exchange Tips
  • TIP #1: DELETING email:
  • You can delete all your unnecessary email to clear up usable space and to remain under quota. You must actually empty or delete everything in the DELETED ITEMS folder.
  • It is important to remember all the email that accumulates in your SENT ITEMS folder (and which counts against your quota). You are required to keep only two weeks of email; you may delete the rest by moving it to the DELETED ITEMS folder (especially from INBOX and SENT ITEMS folders). Remember, if you leave mail in the DELETED ITEMS folder, it still counts against your quota.
  • Tip #2: The DELETED ITEMS folder:
  • When an email is selected and deleted, it is placed in the Deleted Items folder. While located in this folder, the email and any attachments will still count towards your quota. To delete them permanently, right-click on the Deleted Items folder and select "Empty Deleted Items Folder".
  • Tip #3: ARCHIVING Email:
  • You can save or archive your email to your local hard drive (or attached storage device such as a pen drive) or network drive (H drive).
  • To do this you must first create a personal folder (also known as a .PST file). This folder will show up in your list of folders in Outlook and you can then simply move your email to it, freeing up space. Personal folders can also be created and/or moved onto external devices or burned onto CDs for a more permanent archive (in the event your hard drive should fail).

Remember: E-mails saved with attachments (WORD documents, spreadsheets, etc.) take up considerably more space. So, you may want to save such attachments to your hard disk or elsewhere rather than keeping them as e-mail.

Note: Microsoft Outlook is the primary client software for Exchange

Cyrus Tips
  • You can check the storage usage of your folders at https://www.utdallas.edu/ir/tools/imapquota/
  • If you use a Trash folder for deleted messages (default for many clients), remember to empty this Trash folder. Also, if you have exceeded your quota, with the Trash folder option, you will not be able to delete messages. Instead try "Marked deleted" and then either "Compact" or "Expunge" your folders.
  • Remember to check your "Sent" folders, which record a copy of all outgoing mail. These can fill up quickly.
  • Attachments, especially Word attachments, can easily consume more space than you realize. It's best to download such messages and then delete/expunge them afterwards.
  • Local folders (physically stored on local desktop machine) can be used to download or offline messages from the server.