How can I lessen the update time in outlook 2013 with out deleting his folders/sub-folders?

Question

I am working with an end user, who is using Outlook 2013 on Windows 7. Our company also uses Office 365.

The user currently has about 200+ folders/sub-folders. So every time the user opens up Outlook 2013 it takes hours to update, which prevents the user from seeing his most recent emails until it is finished updating.

The user does not use any rules. When he receives an email he deletes it or drag-and-drop it into the specific folder/sub-folder.

How can I lessen the update time without deleting the users folders/sub-folders?

Answer 1

Generally you do not want to keep outdated stuff in synchronized resources in any type of network service which does full synchronization. E-mail, files, etc.

The best practice is to move e-mails into local archive. *)

You can evaluate this question: Is it really necessary to have messages older than X months available on server and synced on daily basis?

If the answer is NO, then create PST file on local disk and move old e-mails there. Optionally you can create more than one PST file, e.g. one for every year, one for 3 years period etc. You can decide this based on total yearly size of archived e-mails.

*) based on my working experience in big companies: they are doing nothing else, but this, too. They are limiting amount of possible online storage to much lower quotas than you currently have in Microsoft. So moving items locally is perfectly normal and recommended. Outlook even has AutoArchive feature for this. Consider using it.