Free up space in emails

[real13]

I carry out PA work for a Director.
He gets around 50 emails a day.

He keeps getting a ‘mailbox nearly full’ message.
I’ve mass deleted LinkedIn invites, newsletters, meeting responses etc.

I have offered to save all old emails and then delete them, but he doesn’t want that.

How can I free up more space without deleting anything useful?!

I’m not a tech expert at all so interested to see what others suggest.
It sounds like he won’t change how he works so I would be increasing the mailbox size, if that’s not possible then change provider so he has more capacity.

Can you delete everything over x years old? Think about what he actually needs to keep e.g. for regulatory purposes or projects in progress etc, then delete the rest over a certain date old.

Also order mailbox by size - save any large attachments elsewhere and delete the email copy.

You need to save the emails into a folder (or ideally folders if you have time to categorise them) on his personal drive. If you're using Outlook you should be able to create the folders through Outlook, and they can just be accessed in the normal way in his mailbox. The only potential issue is if he is on a different operating system, i.e. if one of you is on Mac and the other Windows, as the folders aren't mutually visible if that is the case.

Rather depends on the job function and whether there's a need to have access to very old emails.

Assuming there isn't, then (as suggested) I would sort by size and delete any huge emails if they are obviously irrelevant. (in Sent and In boxes).

I would NOT recommend you move the mails to a local folder on your computer as he will not be able to access them. You could (as also suggested) organise them into folders within outlook, (not locally) but this won't save any space.

I would also request more space be allocated to the mail account, presumably by your support team, or who ever hosts his mail.

I delete very large attachments that often makes a difference. Obviously I have to save them somewhere else in case I need them.

Yes we have to do this at work and it’s all about deleting the emails with the attachments. As long as you’ve saved the files you need, you won’t be deleting anything important. Keep a record of an important email conversation by printing it out and filing it.

I archive mine onto the network to free up space if I can’t delete important ones and tell some emails to go directly to junk

As good practice I hope everything useful has been uploaded to other folders on a shared drive/SharePoint.

It sounds like a nightmare from a project and audit point of view.

What email system does he use and can you just buy more space?

otherwise, deleting attachments is the way to go. One big video attachment could be taking up 50% of the space.

I delete anything not super important that I would want to keep anyway if I’ve replied to it as then the original is in my sent items attached to the reply.

What email client are you using? With Outlook you can change the settings to move things to archive after 1/3/6/12 months.