Managing Gmail size issues

Do you have "size issues"? Well if its with Gmail we have some tips to help you today!

Many of my clients are coming to me saying they can no longer send or receive email, a quick glance at the bottom of their gmail web page tells me they have reached the mailbox limit - something must be deleted!

Many people run Outlook as a client to their gmail, luckily that is about the only good solution at the moment. Here is a quick "for dummies" guide on how to clean up those big emails (click to enlarge):

Once you have moved messages to the trash folder you can then wait 30 days for gmail to delete them permanently to free the space up, or login to your gmail web page and empty the trash manually.

Simply clicking delete on mail in Outlook will not actually delete them from your gmail, they go to All Mail.

This procedure will only work if your Outlook is configured as an IMAP client, and will work similarly with any other program that connects to your gmail using imap.

Unfortunately if you are using just the gmail web interface there is no easy way to delete large messages, but there is a page where you can vote for this feature (PLEASE DO):
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=suggestions.cs&issue=116865&bucket=16935

Under Organization look for: "Sort messages by size, date, sender, etc." and Suggest it!!!

It is easy to avoid this situation - zip any files over 500 kb (just right click and Send to Compressed Folder, then attach) use programs like Picasa to send images, send other large attachments using a web sending service (some may not be completely private) such as:

• http://www.box.net/ (I highly recommend this secure sending service, with free options)
• http://senduit.com/
• http://www.yousendit.com/
• http://rapidshare.com/
• http://www.mediafire.com/
• http://www.filemail.com/

With some of these services someone could possibly guess the weblink - it is highly unlikely as links are usually complex, but possible, using a link that expires is a good way to minimize this risk. You can however upload them using an encrypted zip file (or use box.net), there are dozens of programs for making password protected zips like Power Archiver, Winrar, Winzip... Or use PGP to encrypt the files - only someone with the PGP key can open it http://www.gnupg.org/ There are dozens of other options if you look, tons of them completely free, and loaded with features!

When reading those funny forwards - consider deleting them after you read them especially if it has one of those funny video attachments!!

Buying more space is NOT an option - if you have managed to fill 7+ gigabytes of gmail, you will eventually fill even more - you must change your ways, and its much simpler than a 12 step process!!!

UPDATE: On another note - if you have Small Business Server on your network you should be taking advantage of Sharepoint server - it comes ready to go on your SBS server - Microsofts' full fledged document library and collaboration tool - you can even give users outside your domain secure access to this free tool. Simply upload files to the document library and start sharing - it even has version tracking so multiple people can collaborate and edit a project, and you can see who created which version of the file.