How to Purge an Email Account Using Outlook 2007

POP3 email accounts are designed to download email to your local computer each time your email client checks mail. Outlook can be configured to leave mail on the server. This has been known to result in Outlook re-downloading mail that has been left on the server.

Megabytes recommends that customers do not enable the “Leave mail on server” option when using POP3 email account access.

Megabytes recommends downloading all available updates and service packs for Microsoft Office Outlook.

If your Outlook client is setup to leave mail on the mail server, follow this procedure to “purge” all messages stored on the server.

• Open Outlook
• Click on Tools > Account Settings
• Select the email account you wish to purge
• Click Change…

• Click More Settings…

• Click the “Advanced” tab at the top
• Location the “Leave a copy of messages on the server” checkbox and UNCHECK it

• Click OK
• Click Next >
• Click Finish
• Click Close

Now, click Send/Receive and let the process finish completely. Depending on your Internet connection speed, computer performance, and amount of email, this process may take some time to complete.

Once complete, your email account should be purged of all messages. If you wish, you can now turn back on the option to leave mail on the server.

NOTE: Megabytes strongly recommends that if you decide to leave mail on the mail server, you adhere to the following suggestion:

• Leave only 5 days of mail on the server
• Delete mail from the server when deleted from “Deleted Items”
• Use the screen shot below to set your settings

For information on how to configure Outlook 2007 to automatically delete junk email flagged by the Megabytes Spam Filter, view this page.