There are several things that could cause this, and Milly outlined some
things to look at. One other thing that can cause it is this:
- Your mail is hosted on a Microsoft Exchange or similar server
- You are using POP3 to access your mailbox
- Your Outlook is configured to leave messages on the server, but not remove
them
- The mailbox on the server has a size limit
What could be happening is that your mailbox on the server is getting full
because Outlook is not removing them once it's downloaded them. In this
scenario the "inbox" that is full is not the local Inbox in your Outlook
client, but rather the mailbox on the server. I ran into this several years
ago and it was kind of a pain for the mail provider, as since Microsoft
Exchange does not allow you to customize that message there was no way to
indicate to the end user that it wasn't their local computer that was full,
it was something on the server.
If you would like to check to see if this is the case, you can perform the
following steps.
In Outlook 97:
- Click on Tools -> Services
- Select Internet E-Mail
- Click Properties
- Click the Advanced tab (if present)
On this screen you should see a setting "Leave a copy of messages on
server". If this is the only thing selected, then mail will *never* be
removed from server by Outlook. This is a common setting for people who are
checking a POP3 mailbox from more than one computer. In such a case, one of
the machines should be configured to remove them after a certain number of
days. Please note that this setting is *not* enabled by default, so if
yours is checked then someone checked it. I would do some research to
determine who configured it that way and why.
In the meantime however, if the above settings are what you see, then that
is likely your problem. Simply unchecking the "leave a copy of messages on
server" and clicking OK all the way out will cause Outlook to clear out the
server mailbox the next time it does a send/receive. For this reason I'd
recommend finding out why it's configured to leave them there before
clearing them out!
It is also possible that if you are in fact configured to remove messages
after a certain number of days, it could be that you received a large amount
of mail (such as a few emails with large file attachments) during that time,
causing you to exceed the mailbox quota before your clean-out time frame had
been reached.
Joe
