I have MS Outlook version 6.0 as my email software. 
My secretary is concerned that just having 20,000 emails in 
my Inbox will cause problems. That is not to mention some 5,000 in the 
sent box and all the other mailboxes I have.

Is there a problem? Is there a limit? Any suggestions?
Thanks.
John P.

Hi pendleton-ga:

I'm thinking that you're using Outlook Express version 6, instead of
Outlook (which goes by the designation 97, 98, 2000, 2002, XP, and
2003).

If so, then you may be interested to know that OE stores each folder
in a separate .dbx file. As best as I am able to determine, the
limitation is on the maximum size of the .dbx file, as opposed to the
number of individual e-mails. Depending on your operating system, this
limit can be 4 GB (for Windows 98 SE/2000 using FAT32). As for the
number of e-mails, I suspect (but was not able to find corroborating
evidence online) that the maximum number in any one .dbx file is
65,535 as I believe that the message 'index' is a 16-bit number.

Sorry that I wasn't able to find anything conclusive for you this time!

If you will accept some advice, though, I strongly urge you to
consider separating out some of those 20,000 messages from your Inbox
into other folders. Since each folder is a single file, if anything
were to happen to your Inbox.dbx file, you'll be losing 20,000
messages. Separating them into separate folders will help you
organize, as well as provide some safety in case of file corruption.

Best regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

As an e-mail accumulator myself, I'd like to add a thought.  Having
them all in one folder makes searching easy, especially if you can
sort on sender name, subject, etc., depending on what you're looking
for.  Except for really specific  categories, I prefer it that way
because most messages could be filed by more than one classification,
and then it's a pain to search for them.

You can copy your whole e-mail folder to another location for backup
purposes or even put it on a CD.  That should offer some security in
case you lose it.

But--the bigger the folder gets, the likelier you are to have
problems.  My inbox routinely starts to bog down or mess up messages
when my total goes over 2000.

I have two solutions.  One:  I have an auxiliary "inbox" where the
real quantity accumulates.  It is just a folder with a different name.
 Periodically I move all but the newest stuff there, so it's all in
one place but not in my active folder.  Two:  From time to time I sort
the mailbox by something other than date and just scan through all or
part of it.  Seeing all the messages from one source together or all
those on one topic, I find it easier to delete whole chunks than I
would if I had to review all the darn things individually (which in
all honesty I know I will never do).  Also, if you have the habit of
keeping an entire thread within the message and adding the latest
content to what was already there, often you can delete all but the
last message, and then you have the entire thread without keeping the
17 that led up to the conclusion.

Apteryx