Tips for Managing Your Entourage Email
for MAC Users

 

Below are some useful tricks for managing the size of your Microsoft Entourage mailbox.  Remember, by default all your email is stored on the University’s server, which has a limited capacity and will cease functioning if it gets too full.  It is everyone’s responsibility to manage the size of their mailbox.

Important Note: These procedures were composed and tested using Microsoft Office 2004 for MAC.

 

1. Personal Folders Service
   Personal Folders are storage folders that Entourage creates for you on your hard drive.  The folder is named Folders on My Computer. You can use these folders to store old emails that you don’t want to leave on the server. 
    
   1. With Entourage running, make sure that you have the Folder View available. You can do this by going to the View menu at the top of the screen and making sure there is a check mark next to Folder List.  Displaying the Folder List will give you a tree view of all available Entourage folders and will be necessary to follow many of these tips.
      
      
      
      
       
2. The Folders on My Computer tree is where you can create new folders for backup and organizational purposes.  Here’s how to create a new folder:
    
   1. Highlight the Inbox tree.
       
   2. Click File on the menu at the top of your screen and choose New. A sub menu will appear. Choose Subfolder.
       
   3. You will be prompted to name the folder.
       
   4. To move emails to your new folder, simply click on Exchange Inbox in your Folder List so that you can see your email again. You can now either select which emails you want by clicking on them separately, or you can click on the first one and hold down the Apple key + A, which will select all of them.
       
   5. With the emails selected that you want to move, simply “drag and drop” them to the newly created folder in the Folder List. When done, click on the new folder to verify that you have moved them successfully.
       
3. Creating a Rule
   
   If you would like to send emails directly to your Personal Folders without doing it manually, you can create a Rule.  Rules tell Entourage to perform an action automatically so you don’t have to

    

   1. Click Tools on the menu at the top of your screen and choose Rules.
      
      
       
   2. Click the Mail (Exchange) tab. Next, click the New Rule button.
      
      There are many different kinds of rules you can make in Entourage to handle how your email is delivered and stored.  The rule we are going to create here as an example will automatically send email from one particular correspondent directly to a Personal Folder.  Feel free to try making other kinds of rules as well.
      
      
       
   3. You will be prompted to name the rule.
       
   4. Click on the All messages drop down box and chose From. Enter your correspondent’s full email address (ex. contact@email.com) in the From… box.
       
   5. Next, click on the Change status drop down box and chose Move message. By default it will choose Inbox (On My Computer), or can select any folder.
       
   6. Click OK.
       

Important Note:  Remember that these personal folders live on your hard drive, so when you need to back up your data you will also need to back up your personal folders as well. The data folder you will want to backup is located in Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities/Main Identity.

If you have any questions about any of the procedures in this document, please contact the Technology Services Help Desk at (205) 665-6520.  The Help Desk is available 24 hours a day, 7 days week.  Alternatively, an email can be sent to helpdesk@montevallo.edu.

 

Revised November 2009