How to Quickly Clean Email from Outlook

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Cartoon image of man overwhelmed by email

It’s time to clear your inbox. You’ve got 2,892 unread emails sitting there. And there are 4,536 more emails that you’ve opened and haven’t done anything with yet. What can you do about all that email cluttering your inbox , slowing down Outlook, and interfering with your productivity?

Sure, you could spend hours learning how to use all the tools Microsoft provides for managing and categorizing emails. But if you’re like me, you probably don’t have the time or patience to learn all that stuff. You’ve got a business to run or things to do, and you just need to clean the junk out of your email.

These tips will help you do that without wasting hours of time learning how to categorize and organize mail.

The Key to Turning Mount Email into a Molehill

The first thing to know is that when your inbox is overflowing, you can’t take a little cat feet approach to cleaning it out. Deleting emails one by one will leave your brain in a fog and won’t get the job done. You’re going to have to bulldoze your way through your email account.  And you need to do that without accidentally losing anything that is truly important.

Backup Your Outlook Email Account

Before you start, make a backup of your entire email account if possible.

You can do that in Microsoft Outlook desktop version by going to the File menu.

Outlook file menu location

Then choose Open & Export > Import/Export. In the popup, choose Export to a File >  Outlook Data File (PST).

how to export PST file to backup email

You’ll then be shown a list of folders. Choose the one you want to back up and be sure to check the Include Subfolders box.  

If you have multiple PST files (say, you have two different email addresses set up in Outlook), you’ll need to repeat the process for each one.

Group Emails to Delete Them Quickly

One secret to cutting through email clutter quickly is to sort your emails into electronic piles that you can work on (i.e., get rid of) as a group.  Here are multiple ways to do that without opening each piece of email.

Filter Incoming Mail with Folders and Rules

Let Outlook automatically group emails for you by using the rules function. You can use this feature to separate mail you get from various sources from other inbox mail – similar to what Gmail does with the promotions and Social Tabs.

Start by creating folders for the mail you want to group and save. To do that, right click on the inbox where you want the folder to be stored. Then choose New Folder. and name the folder. For instance, you might create a folder for an email newsletter you’ve subscribed to.  

how to create folders in Outlook desktop

Now go to your inbox. Select one of the emails from that source. Right click on it and choose Rules from the popup.  Then choose “Always Move Messages From:  (The sender of the email item you clicked on will show up).  Next, you’ll see a popup allowing you to choose the folder you want the messages moved to.

how to create a rule in outlook to move mail to a specific folder

Using rules and folders to group mail can clear things that don’t need your immediate attention from your inbox. Or, it can group important messages together where you can find them. Finally, it can make it easier to find and delete mail you no longer need it.  For instance, you could go in and delete all but the last two months’ worth of that subscription newsletter.

Sort and Delete Email Based on the From Line

Do you get emails frequently from certain websites, companies, or individuals? Chances are, many of those messages will always come from the same “From” line. To find those frequent emailers in your inbox, click on the word “from” at the top of your Outlook inbox. Outlook will list all the emails in your inbox by the words in the from line.

Sort Outlook email by who it's from

That will let you quickly select and delete a whole group of emails at once. (For instance, those sale notices your favorite store sends that you don’t need anymore.) 

Unsubscribe

Unsubscribe from emails you no longer want to receive. If someone is sending you emails frequently, and you aren’t reading them, you don’t need them cluttering your inbox. Open one of the emails, scroll to the bottom and look for the word Unsubscribe. Click on the unsubscribe link to get yourself off that mailing list.

Sort by Subject Line

Spam, as well as some newsletters and mailing lists often use characters other than letters as the first character in the subject line.

Common non-alphabet characters are quote marks, dollar signs, and various types of icons. When you sort an Outlook inbox by subject line, Outlook will arrange the emails according to those first characters.

Any email that doesn’t have a subject line will be at the top of the list.

Emails that have characters like quote marks, brackets or dollar signs follow.  Most of these will be spam. Select the ones you don’t need and delete them.  (If there’s a lot from the same source, open one and look for that unsubscribe link.)

Sort by subject in Outlook to find emails that start with icons (and are usually spam)

Next, scroll down to the bottom of the inbox. There you’ll find all the emails that use icons to start the subject line. Most or all of those will be spam, too. Select them all and delete.

Remove Months or Years of Old Email Without Deleting it

One way to do that is to archive your old mail. Select the mail you want to archive, right click and then choose archive from the drop down. You’ll be prompted to choose or create an archive folder.

Doing so gets the email out of your inbox.  But if you were hoping you’d speed up Outlook by archiving emails this way, you won’t. It just moves mail to an Archive folder, which is in Outlook. (i.e., it doesn’t save space.) An alternative:

Create a new Outlooks PST file and move all the old mail into the new folder.

To create a new PST file, select and right click on your inbox. In the Home Group on the ribbon, choose New Items. Then choose “more” and then choose Outlook Data File.

steps to create new Outlook PST file

Give the file a name.

Now go back to the inbox and select all the old mail you want to remove (but not lose.) For instance all the mail you received more than 6 months ago. Drag that email into the new PST file you created. Then, when the mail is moved, right click on that new PST file and choose Close.

That will remove it from the list of files Outlook opens when it loads. Whenever you want to reopen that folder, go to the File menu and choose Open & Export > Open Outlook Data File.   

How to open an Outlook PST file you've closed

Delete the Mail in the Deleted Mail Folder

When you click on the garbage can icon to delete mail, it doesn’t really get deleted. It just gets moved to a Deleted Items folder. So, while that deleted email is out of your inbox, it’s still taking up space in Outlook.  Free up that space by selecting all the emails in the deleted folder and clicking the garbage can icon again. 

Permanently Delete Mail in One Click

If you know you want to permanently delete an email or a group of emails, hold down the shift key when you click on the garbage can icon.  You’ll see a popup that asks if you really want to permanently delete the email(s).

Don’t Forget to Clean the Sent Items Folder

The Sent Items folder is easy to forget about when you’re cleaning up your Outlook file. But don’t. If you get and send a lot of email, that could have thousands of emails buried in it. Sort and eliminate the unneeded mail in that folder using any of the methods above.

Best Time to Clean Up Your Email

Cleaning out old mail is a task that doesn’t take much concentration. But it is one you need to do periodically, so schedule time to work on the task.

As long as you’ve backed up the account first, you might want to schedule the task to do at a time of the day when you aren’t able to concentrate on more important tasks. Depending on your schedule, and where you work, that might be mid- to late afternoon, or even at night while you’re watching TV. 

Need tips on cleaning out your Gmail box? Check out Leo Notenboom’s website for tips on making space in your Google accounts.

Image source: DAll-e

By Janet Attard

I’m a “seasoned entrepreneur” (what an AI bot called me) with a passion for writing content that helps people achieve their goals and solve problems. I’ve been helping small businesses for 35 years and founded the Business Know-How small business site that reached millions of people a year before it was acquired. I ran popular small business forums on AOL, MSN, and GEnie for many years, and was a contractor to the U.S. Air Force Office of Small Business for ten years, as well. Although I continue to create some content for small businesses, I'm also focusing now on meeting the informational needs of seniors and older people. Towards that end, I'm the cofounder of https://waymoreliving.com .

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