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St George's Email Policy

Good practice will help you organise and manage your email efficiently.  It will also help you stay within quota. If you go over quota on your email account you will no longer be able to receive new email – all incoming messages will be bounced back to the sender until you reduce your mailbox size and are within quota again.

Good practice is also required when writing emails within and for the workplace as this requires a different etiquette than when emailling or messaging  friends.  St George's email etiquette guidance.

Good practice guidelines

  • Delete all unwanted messages and messages that have been dealt with.

  • Delete all junk mail or ‘spam’.

  • Avoid distributing unwanted mail – make sure your messages are relevant/of interest to recipients.

  • Use ‘local folders’ to store any messages you want to keep. 

  • Do not keep messages with attachments in your mailbox any longer than is absolutely necessary.

  • Make sure your email client is configured to ‘expunge’ all deleted messages.

Managing your email effectively

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Email size

Simple text-only messages are usually only a few kilobytes in size. However, when documents or images are attached to an email, the size of the message can increase dramatically. This in turn increases the amount of storage space used on the server.

Mailbox

Your mailbox comprises your inbox, drafts, sent items, trash (deleted items) and any other personal folders you have created in order to sort your messages. This means that moving messages from your inbox to any of the other folders you have created will not reduce the size of your mailbox – you are merely moving the messages around within your mailbox.

Storage

The only messages that you really need to keep in your mailbox are those awaiting action, namely those you intend to reply to or forward to someone else. Your mailbox should not be used as a filing system to store documents or other information. Messages not requiring any action, and those already replied to or forwarded, should be deleted.

Sent items

It is also wise to keep an eye on your ‘sent items’ folder. A copy of every message and attachment you send is saved to your there. Deleting old sent messages can help dramatically reduce the size of your mailbox.

Local folders

Any emails you receive containing information you want to keep can be downloaded to a ‘local folder’ and stored on your PC. Your local folders can still be viewed (and the saved messages accessed) from within Outlook. In the same way, attachments can either be saved to your home directory (H: drive) or to your PC. The original copy of the message can then be deleted from your mailbox. 

 Need help?

If you require any assistance with downloading messages, saving messages to local folders, saving attachments or managing mail, please contact IT/AV Support.

 

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