Description

search for large emails in outlook ?

Title: How to Hunt Down the Space-Hogging Emails in Outlook (and Delete Them in Seconds)

If your IT department just sent the dreaded “Your mailbox is 99 % full” message, relax—you don’t have to scroll through 14 327 random messages to find the culprits. Outlook has half a dozen built-in tricks that let you surface the whales in seconds and toss them back into the digital ocean. Below are the five fastest, plus a bonus PowerShell one-liner for the geeks who want bragging rights.

1. The “Spreadsheet” Trick (Reading Pane + Size column)
1. Click View → Reading Pane → Hidden.
2. Your inbox now looks like Excel.
3. Still don’t see a Size column? Right-click any column header → Size.
4. Click the Size header once → largest files float to the top.
5. Shift-select the monsters → Delete → enjoy the dopamine hit when your quota bar turns green.

2. The “Missing Column” Fix (for Outlook desktop)
Sometimes the Size column is simply switched off.
View → View Settings → Columns → type “Size” in the left pane → Add → OK.
Pro tip: while you’re here, also add “Attachment” so you can instantly see which 30 MB “quick screenshot” is actually last year’s Christmas party video.

3. Instant Filter: size:>10MB
Click in the search box and type:
size:>10MB
That’s it. Outlook instantly shows every message larger than 10 megabytes.
Change the number to 5, 15, 50—whatever your IT team yelled at you about.
Need only the ones with attachments? Add: hasattachments:yes

4. Search Folders – the gift that keeps on giving
Right-click “Search Folders” → New Search Folder → “Large mail” → choose a size threshold (e.g., 100 KB, 1 MB, 5 MB).
Outlook creates a live folder that auto-updates. Every future whale lands here without you lifting a finger.
Pin it to Favorites and check it once a week; you’ll never hit quota again.

5. AQS ninja moves
AQS = Advanced Query Syntax. Memorize these three and you’ll look like a wizard:
subject:budget size:>5MB received:this month
from:boss hasattachments:yes size:>20MB
to:all@company.com size:>2MB
Hit Enter, select all, Delete. Done.

Bonus round: PowerShell for the over-achievers
Open Exchange Online PowerShell and paste:
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery “Size:>10485760” -TargetMailbox “admin@yourcompany.com” -TargetFolder “LargeEmails” -LogOnly -LogLevel Full
This generates a tidy CSV report of every message > 10 MB without touching anyone’s inbox. Schedule it as a task and you’ll get a weekly “Hall of Shame” list ready for polite user e-mails.

Quick cleanup checklist
Empty Deleted Items after the purge.
Don’t forget Sent Items—half your big files are outgoing.
Compress or save attachments to OneDrive/SharePoint and replace with links.
Set an auto-archive rule: anything older than 2 years with attachments > 5 MB gets moved to an archive mailbox.

There you go—six ways to reclaim your mailbox without reading a single newsletter from 2017. Pick the one that feels fastest, set a calendar reminder for the first Monday of every month, and you’ll stay on IT’s nice list forever.