Finding the Largest Messages in Your Inbox

Reader Carlos writes: Attachments are taking up space in my email folder. How do I find and delete the biggest ones?

Depends on how you deal with your email.

If you use Outlook (I'm using Outlook 2003, but instructions are similar for most versions of the program), open the folder you want to search through for big attachments, then click on the "Arranged By:" bar and select "Size" from the drop-down box. This will sort your email by the amount of space it takes up. Invariably, large attachments will be the messages on top. Delete the biggest space hogs. If you want to keep the message but delete the attachment, double click the message to open it, then right-click the attachment. Select "Remove" from the menu and hit Escape to close the message. You're done!

If you use webmail like Yahoo! Mail, the same basic trick works: Just click the Size bar to sort by size, then delete the largest messages from the list. I am unaware of a way to delete an attachment in Yahoo! Mail without deleting the message. If you want to keep the message itself, forward it to yourself and hit "Remove" next to the attachment before hitting Send.

Since Gmail doesn't let you sort messages (nor does it offer a display of a message's size), there's no real way to sort by size. However you can click "Show search options," then put a check mark next to "Has attachment." This will at least limit the display to messages with attachments. Not perfect, but it's something.

Hope that helps!