Windows Live Mail is restricted to 50,000 KB, (“which I read as 50 MB, I
guess”). How do I remove that restriction?
In this excerpt from
Answercast #87, I look at ways to sidestep size limitations in an online
email account.
]]>
Windows Live Mail storage
Well, it’s interesting. My assistant did a little bit of research and according to Microsoft, your inbox limit should actually automatically increase as you use it.
If you are receiving a lot of email with large attachments, and your inbox limits aren’t increasing fast enough, they actually suggest downloading those large attachments; saving them to your PC and then deleting them from the Live Mail servers.
I’ll include the link to the article that they provided. It talks about exactly this scenario.
Use your computer
I actually have a different take on this.
Whenever you’re using an email service that has some kind of artificial limit and you’re bumping into that limit (because you’re keeping your email on that service’s servers), I strongly recommend that you instead look into using a desktop email program. Download all of your email to your own desktop using the POP3 protocol and then you’ll have as much space as you want on your PC.
Obviously, you can add as much hard drive space to that machine as you want. Clearly, it’s virtually unlimited the amount of email that you can deal with on your own PC – when you’re faced with a limit from your ISP.
It provides a backup
And ultimately, when you think about it, I also recommend using that desktop PC email program to (at a minimum) backup your email.
Remember, if your email is only in one place, it’s not backed up. If that one place happens to be your email service and you lose access to your account, then all of your email is gone in an instant.
So, back it up and while you’re at it, consider using a desktop email program to potentially bypass or sidestep any size limitations that an email service might be imposing.
(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)
Next from Answercast 87 – Why are my Office programs suddenly taking a long time to start and stop?
WLM does have a limit on number of emails collected, something like 2-3000, I forget but was reminded forthwith as I neared that quota. Then I had recourse to Google to learn how to delete emails because WLM doesn’t inform us. So it goes.
How does one know the limit, or if I’m approaching it? I’ve looked all over my WLM and can’t find anything.
I’m actually puzzled as to whether we’re talking here about Windows Live Mail – the email client program, or Windows Live Hotmail – the web based email service.
The program obviously wouldn’t have a limit imposed by Windows like it would for the web based email account.
@Tony
The article clearly is talking about Windows Live HoTMaiL.