The Joy of Finding Big Things (in Outlook 2007)

  • Article

My former boss, Bruce Lynn, asked me this weekend how he could locate all the large (>200kb) entries in his Outlook calendar so he could delete them to free up some space in his mailstore. He couldn't figure out how to do this but knew it must be easy. If you find your mailstore is running short on space it's well worth doing this every once in a while, even if just to delete any large attachments that are no longer needed inside historical calendar appointments.

To do this in Outlook 2003 you need to customise your calendar view as follows:

  1. In your calendar, VIEW > CURRENT VIEW > ALL APPOINTMENTS
  2. Right click on the column header row (where you see Subject, Location etc...) and choose Customize current view
  3. Now add a filter where size is greater than 200 (under the more choices tab)
  4. Optional: Add another filter if you want to see only appointments in the past (Advanced tab > End / on or before / today)
  5. Click OK
  6. Now delete what you don’t want
  7. To return to your normal view choose VIEW > CURRENT VIEW > DAY/WEEK/MONTH

It's wonderfully simple in Outlook 2007 though:

  1. In your calendar, type size:>200000 in the quick search box
  2. Delete what you don’t want

Just one example of the power of the new search capabilities in the 2007 Office system. And, of course, this works in all views (mail, tasks, calendar etc) and is a beautifully simple way to cleanse your mailbox of unwanted big stuff.