About 15 percent of the mail stored on the Lab’s mail servers is trash; needless to say, this isn’t the best use for mail servers. When you delete an email message from the Inbox, it is sent to the Trash folder. However, these deleted emails are not removed from the email servers until your trash folder is cleared.

A few tips on emptying the trash folder:

1. In Mozilla and Netscape, hitting Alt-a selects all the mail messages in the current folder. Even better, with the trash folder selected, right click, and select "Empty Trash".

2. In Mozilla and Netscape, an easy way to automate this process is by setting the email client to empty all trash on exit -- every time you exit the email program, the deleted messages will be permanently removed. Under the Edit menu, select the “Mail and Newsgroup” account setting. There are two boxes to check: “Cleanup” and “Empty Trash on Exit”.

Since employees are charged for storage beyond the 100MB limit, it pays to clear out your trash on a regular basis. Not all old files should be deleted, though. While deleting old, non-record email is necessary and cost-efficient, it is a federal requirement that employees keep record material regardless of the format. Information on record material can be found here:

http://www.lbl.gov/ITSD/CIS/CITG/email/IMAP_Messaging_FAQ/IMAP-Manage-diskspace.html#record_files

Also beware that permanently deleted emails cannot always be retrieved by ITSD at a later date. If they can be, you will be charged for the service.