Information Technology

A recent check indicated that 20% of Hampshire’s email files are items in the trash. Hmmm. We could probably do something about that…

Yeah, but who cares, right? I mean it’s my email trash, filling up my quota, so what difference does it make? Glad you asked!

We provide every Hampshire community member with a generous (well, from our perspective, anyway!) email quota. The thing is, we don’t actually have enough storage space to cover us if everyone in the Hampshire community used their full quota. We count on the fact that the average use will actually be significantly less than the quota.

If we start to approach our storage capacity we’ll be faced with some tough choices. Additional storage is expensive, and other alternatives are limiting or intrusive.

So what can you do? Empty your trash! It’s really very easy.

Emptying Trash in Thunderbird

1. From the File Menu select “Empty Trash.”
2. If it’s available, select “Compact Folders” from the File Menu. (Some email accounts in Thunderbird, known as “IMAP” accounts, don’t recover the disk space from deleted files until you take this extra step.) If it’s grayed out, don’t worry, it just means you don’t need it.

Emptying Trash in WebMail

1. From icons at the top select “Empty Trash,” if it’s available.
2. If “Empty Trash” is not available it means that you’ve set up your email to just mark messages that are ready for deleting, and in this case you should select the “Purge Deleted” option on the right side of the WebMail window.

Automatically Emptying the Trash on a Regular Basis

If you don’t want to have to remember to empty your email trash, set it up to be done automatically. We suggest that you do this at least once every 90 days.

In Thunderbird:

1. Right-click (or hold down the Command key while you click if you’re on a Mac with no right button) on the Trash icon in Thunderbird.
2. From the menu that pops up, select “Properties.”
3. Click on “Retention Policy.”
4. Uncheck “Use my account settings.”
5. Click on the “Delete messages more than <30> days old” button.
6. Adjust the “30” to a number that you’re comfortable with.
7. Click “OK.”

In WebMail:

1. After logging into WebMail, click on “Preferences.”
2. Click on “Deleting and Moving Messages.”
3. Under “Purge Trash how often: select “Every Login” (or pick another option if you like).
4. Under “Purge messages in Trash folder older than this amount of days” enter a number that you’re comfortable with.

Thank you for helping us keep email under control!