Manage Exchange Sent Items with Microsoft Entourage
Microsoft Entourage v.X and 2004, when set up for an Exchange account, will automatically save your outgoing messages to your Exchange mailbox, under the "Sent Items" folder. This can be handy to retrieve sent messages later (if you need to verify that you sent something, or recall what you said), and integrates with Microsoft Outlook on Window and Outlook Web Access (OWA).
However, because your outgoing mail can continue to grow with each new message you send out, it can hurt your quota.
Microsoft Entourage does not currently provide a built-in way to prevent your "Sent Items" from filling up your mailbox quota. It does, however, have a combination of features that will let you save your mail to a local folder (which does not count against your quota), and then automatically remove outdated mail from the "Sent Items" folder.
To set this up, you need to go through several steps, outlined below.
Copy all Exchange outgoing mail to a local folder
In Microsoft Entourage v.X or 2004:
- Select Tools menu > Rules. The "Rules" window appears.
- Click on the "Outgoing" tab in the "Rules" window.
- Click on the "New" button. The "Edit Rule" dialog box appears.
- Enter "Copy Exchange Sent Items to local storage" as the name of the rule.
- Select "Account" from the criteria pop-up menu, under the "If" section of the rule.
- Choose "Is" from the pop-up menu that appears next to the "Account" pop-up menu.
- Pick your Exchange account from the list of Entourage accounts next to the "Is" pop-up menu.
- Select "Copy Message" from the action pop-up menu, under the "Then" section of the rule.
- Click on "Choose Folder" under the pop-up menu next to the "Copy Message" pop-up menu. A new dialog box appears and lets you select a destination for the action.
- Pick the "Sent Items" folder under "Folders on My Computer" heading.
- Press the "OK" button to close the "Edit Rule" dialog box and save your new rule.
This new rule will make a copy of every message you send and place it in the local "Sent Items" folder, under the "Folders on My Computer" heading in Entourage's folder list.
Delete old messages from your Exchange "Sent Items" folder
You can use the Schedules feature of Microsoft Entourage v.X and 2004 to automatically delete messages from any mail folder when they match certain criteria, like age.
To create such a schedule in Entourage:
- Select Tools menu > Run Schedule > Edit Schedules. The "Schedules" window appears.
- Click on the "New" button. A new Schedule is created and the "Edit Schedule" window appears.
- Enter "Delete Sent Items from Exchange mailbox" as the name for the new schedule.
- Click on the Occurrence pop-up menu (under the "When" heading) to change "Manually" to "Repeating Schedule."
- Set the schedule to repeat every 1 day.
- Change the Action pop-up menu (under "Action" heading) from "Receive Mail" to "Delete Mail."Note: Remember that any schedule that deletes messages could potentially be destructive. If you are not comfortable with the possibility of unexpected data loss for your "Sent Items," do not proceed.
- Select "Choose folder" the "From" pop-up menu. The "Choose Folder" dialog box appears.
- Choose the "Sent Items" folder in your Exchange account from the "Choose Folder" dialog box.
- Enter a number of days to determine how long messages will stay in your "Sent Items" folder before being deleted. For example, if you type "90," then your messages will stay in your Exchange account for up to 90 days, or about three months. If you want to retain messages longer than that, but are willing to keep them locally rather than in your server-side "Sent Items" folder (so they are no longer subject to your e-mail quota), you can use the instructions above to copy your outgoing messages to a local folder.
- Press the "OK" button to close the "Edit Schedule" dialog box and save your new schedule.