All of Biola's FirstClass users are allotted a set amount of disk space on the FirstClass system. That allotment is based on a users status as a staff/faculty member, student, or an alumnus, but defaults to the greater allotment if a user falls into more than one of those categories. For example, staff and faculty members are given a 50 megabyte (MB) allotment of disk space, students have 20 MB and alumni have 10 MB. If a user is an alum as well as a staff member, they will have 50 MB of disk space available in their FirstClass account.

1. How can I find out how much disk space I'm currently using?
2. Will I be notified or restricted when I get close to my mailbox limit?
3. How do I free up space in my mailbox if I'm getting close to my limit?

1. How can I find out how much disk space I'm currently using?
All FirstClass users should have an folder on their desktop called "Plugging into BUBBS."

Open this folder and look for a folder titled "How much disk space am I using?"

Open this folder and you should be presented with a window such as the one below:

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2. Will I be notified or restricted when I get close to my mailbox limit?
Yes, you will get notifications emailed to you when you reach the point where you have only 5% and then 2% of your allotted disk space available. Once you exceed your allotted disk space quota, you will still be able to receive mail but will not be able to send mail.

In addition, if your mailbox gets to the point where it has doubled your disk space allotment, your account will no longer be able to receive mail and your account will be virtually useless.

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3. How do I free up space in my mailbox if I'm getting close to my limit?
There are several ways to avoid getting to this point, or to start trimming things down if you're already there or rapidly approaching:

Mailbox spring cleaning:
The first, and most obvious, is to do spring cleaning and delete mail that you can safely remove. This includes mail stored in personal mail folders, as all items filed within folders in your FirstClass mailbox still count against your quota--these messages are still stored on the server.

Deleting messages with attachments:
The second way is to look for and remove email messages that contain large or very large attachments, as these messages can be dramatically larger in size and tend to eat up your disk space faster than your average mail message--so much so that only a few messages with large attachments can consume large portions or even the majority of your space allotment!

Here's how to do a quick search in your mailbox for these offending messages:
1. Open up your mailbox.
2. Go to the Edit menu and select Find...
3. In the window that opens, select the checkboxes shown in the image below
and (leaving the Find: line blank) click the Find button.

4. In the resulting window, find and click on the Size column header until the largest item is at the top of the list. Note the size of these files. This can help you to determine which messages contain the largest attachments, helping you decide which messages to remove.

You can also look at the In Folder column header to discover the location of those messages that contain the largest files.

NOTE: Unfortunately, there is no way to remove an attachment from a message while retaining the message itself. You must delete a message to remove an associated attachment. You can, however, export messages (as described below) to save the content of a message, then delete the original message containing the attachment from your FirstClass mailbox.

Exporting FirstClass messages onto your computer
The third option you have when cleaning out your FirstClass mailbox is saving some of your old messages out of FirstClass and onto your local computer's hard drive. You can do this with individual messages or with entire folders full of messages. Here's how:

NOTE: This process will not download attachments which are contained within folders or attached to individual messages. You must download those to your computer manually before you permanently remove those messages/folders from your FirstClass mailbox.

1. Select the message or folder you would like to export.
2. Go to the File menu and select the Export... command.
3. Tell FirstClass where you would like to save the file (or folder), then click Choose.

4. You can now go to that location and look at the files and/or folders that were exported. Those files should appear as .rtf files, or Rich Text Format files. This format is particularly nice in that it maintains any of the text formatting previously applied to a document or message.

5. You can then file these messages on your computer's hard drive for later reference.

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Created by: Scott Himes, 5.21.03. Last modified by: Scott Himes, 5.21.03.