Removing Attachments from Outlook Messages

Here is a simple trick that not a lot of people are aware of. If you are anything like me, you probably keep ALL incoming and outgoing email, just in case you need to go back and reference something either you sent to somebody or they sent to you. And in some cases, it is a requirement of the company you work for that you keep all email correspondence for a period of time. When some of these messages contain attachments, your Exchange mailbox or PST file can grow to ridiculous amounts. Sometimes you have an email that you would like to keep, however the “Joke” AVI movie file your colleague included along with it is not necessary, or you have saved off the attachment and do not need it taking up space in your PST or Exchange Mail Store.

For the longest time, I didn’t know this could be done either, but the attachment can be stripped from the message and the message saved back freeing up space. Just open the message in its own window (This cannot be done from the preview pane inside of Outlook, the message has to be double-clicked, opening in its own window), then right-click on the message attachment and choose “Remove”. You can then either click on FileSave, or just choose close the message and choose “Yes” when the dialog box asks you if you want to save.