Easy Ways to Optimize Your Outlook Mailbox

Why Optimize Your Outlook Email

A cluttered Outlook mailbox slows you down: important messages get buried and notifications pile up. Once the mailbox reaches its storage limit, you may not be able to send or receive email at all.

You can optimize your Outlook storage to increase the storage, organisation, and appearance of your emails by using the Clean Email app.

This app offers many features and tools to enhance your emailing life. For example, you can quickly unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and even create Auto Clean rules to cut out manual organisation.

Step One: How to Optimize Outlook Mailbox

Here's how to optimize your Outlook mailbox by unsubscribing from unwanted email senders and getting rid of unwanted email subscriptions.

If you never unsubscribe, or accidentally enter your email into a website, you will find your email becomes cluttered daily with spam and unopened emails.

Unsubscriber

Our Email Unsubscriber is one of the Clean Email’s features to help instantly get rid of unwanted mail landing in your inbox every single day.

By unsubscribing from unwanted newsletters, you will decrease the clutter, and gain more mail storage.

All you need to do is click a button!

1. Sign in with your mail account here.
2. Click the Unsubscriber button in the sidebar.
3. You will see all email subscriptions with three options next to them.
4. Click Unsubscribe to get rid of the subscription.
5. Click Read Later to move future emails from this subscription into a separate ‘Read Later’ folder.
6. Or click Keep, to keep receiving new emails in your inbox.

Seems super easy, right?

To manually unsubscribe from emails in Outlook you will have to locate an email and find the unsubscribe button hidden in the body text.

Lots of newsletters will hide the option to unsubscribe to avoid you from doing it.

The Clean Email solution cuts out all the hard work!

Step Two: How to Clean Outlook Mailbox

Auto Clean

The Auto Clean from Clean Email will stop you from ever having to complete manual routine email tasks ever again.

Rules are like filters, as soon as an email lands in your inbox, Auto Clean will send it to the right place, either archive, trash, or a different folder.

By creating rules, you will save tons of time throughout your day, all important tasks will be ready, and there will be no email procrastination!

Here’s how to achieve ultimate Outlook organization by using Auto Clean.

1. Click the Inbox or All mail view from the left-side panel.
2. Select an email and mark the checkbox near the email subject if you want to select all messages from this sender.
3. Choose an action like Trash on the top panel to apply to the selected messages.
4. A pop-up will appear offering you to create an Auto Clean rule for ‘Selected and future similar emails’.
5. Click Create advanced Auto Clean rule to adjust the specific criteria of the rule (if necessary).
6. Click Move to Trash and Create Rule.

You can view all Auto Clean rules you have created by clicking the Auto Clean view on the left-side panel. Here you can pause, edit, or remove any rules you create.

You will also see updates on when Auto Clean last ran and how many emails have been cleaned.

Read more about how to move Outlook incoming emails into specific folders automatically here!

Cleaning Suggestions

With the Clean Email’s Cleaning Suggestions feature that presents cleaning suggestions to you in various locations throughout the application, you will be prompted to organise more often!

You will find suggestions to clean in the QuickStart Page, within the Navigation Menu, and when you open a Smart Folder.

The Cleaning Suggestions work by analysing data from emails you frequently clean.

For example, if you often delete or archive certain messages, the app will remember the features of these messages to help create suggestions in the future.

The type of data collected are:

• The sender’s email address.
• Message subject lines.
• Amount and size of attachments.
• The message ages.

But what about my privacy? Don’t worry.

Our app never saves data from your messages and never passes messages through to other users or staff. The only data collected is what is listed above. The app collects this specific data to help create the algorithm.

Other Clean Email’s Features

You can decrease your mailbox size in Outlook and optimise your mailbox by using these handy tools:

• Smart Folders: Bundles emails into easy view folders to help with organisation.

• Block: If unsubscribing isn’t enough, easily block unwanted senders!

• Keep Newest: Use Keep Newest for emails that are only relevant until the next message comes in.

Top Tips for Cleaning Outlook Mailbox!

Clean Up Redundant Messages

Classic Outlook for Windows has a Clean Up tool that deletes messages already quoted in full in a later reply, so each conversation keeps only its latest message. Removed messages go to Deleted Items.

1. On the Home tab, select Clean Up in the Delete group (in the simplified ribbon, select the arrow next to Delete).
2. Choose Clean Up Conversation, Clean Up Folder, or Clean Up Folder & Subfolders.
3. Confirm.

Follow our guide on how to automatically delete emails in Outlook.

Find Mailbox Size

By knowing your mailbox size in Outlook, you can decide if you need to remove older emails to make space and which emails you need to start deleting.

In classic Outlook for Windows:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click File → Info.
3. Select Tools → Mailbox Cleanup.
4. Now select View Mailbox Size.

In new Outlook and Outlook.com, open Settings and search for Storage to see how much space each folder uses. If you’re running out of room, see our guide on fixing a full Outlook mailbox.

Step Three: How to Organize Outlook Mailbox

Here are other handy ways you can optimize Outlook. They work in both new and classic Outlook, although some menus differ.

Create Folders in Outlook

Create folders to help organise your emails, instead of them all being in one place.

Once you have created folders to suit your needs, you can either spend the start of each day organising emails or use Auto Clean to automate your incoming mail.

Some ideas for creating folders are.

• A to-do list.
• Follow-ups.
• Reminders.

Turn Emails into Tasks

Turn emails that need action into tasks. In classic Outlook, drag the message onto the Tasks icon in the navigation pane. In new Outlook, open My Day and drag the message to its To Do tab. You can then add a due date and reminder in Microsoft To Do.

Turn On Focused Inbox

Focused Inbox splits your inbox into Focused and Other tabs and keeps automated and bulk mail out of your way. In new Outlook, go to View → View settings → Mail → Layout and select Sort messages into Focused and Other. To fix a misplaced sender, right-click a message and choose Move → Always move to Focused inbox. See our Focused Inbox guide.

Use Categories

Categorize your emails to help organize your mailbox and to locate future likewise emails when sorting your mailbox or completing tasks.

To add a category in classic Outlook, open the message, select Categorize in the Tags group on the ribbon, and choose a category. In new Outlook, right-click the message in the list and select Categorize.

Other articles you will find helpful:

• How to Automatically Forward Emails in Outlook
• Outlook Auto Archive
• How to Optimize Gmail