We have spent a lot of time recently (which translates to a lot of extra expense for our customers) troubleshooting, managing, and working with VERY large mailboxes.

From a purely technical standpoint, once a mailbox gets over a GB in size, it starts to become a minor challenge in terms of supporting it, speed of access and search, and management in general. Once a mailbox gets to be over 2 GB in size, we start to run into some very serious limitations that will manifest in support, management, and disaster recovery scenarios.

Believe us when we say we are VERY heavy Outlook users, but using a few simple techniques, it is not much of a challenge at all to keep our own mailboxes under the 1 GB limit we need to keep us ‘light on our feet' with our own mailboxes.

First: archive! Outlook has a built in archive feature that will remove things from your mailbox and put them into a long term storage file. Our technique is to add to that archive file daily until it gets to be between 1 and 2 GB in size, then burn that to a DVD (so that it isn't taking up space on the server). This can easily be set up to happen automatically in Outlook, and you can get very granular in your control of what gets archived, how old it has to be before archive, etc. Just ask us for help to get this set up.

If you are already in the ‘danger' zone with your mailbox size, we can assist you to remove items from your mailbox into a file manually based on a number of different criteria (usually by date). We can even automate a ‘mass export' of multiple mailboxes by date from the server if you have many users with large mailboxes. We can put these ‘history' files on a DVD or somewhere accessible so that if you do need to look up historical information for any reason, you can get to it.

Finally, once you get everyone on the server down to a reasonable size, we can also assist you with setting up some mailbox limits so that they don't get out of control again. We can set up warnings, and even prevent people from sending and receiving mail when their mailbox gets too large. Most companies start to warn in the 1 GB neighborhood, and then get more severe with the restrictions around 1.5 GB. This ensures they stay well below the 2 GB limit where they can really get into trouble in a disaster recovery situation.

With just a few simple steps to keep things in check, you can ensure your performance stays optimal, and one of the most important business tools around (Outlook) works efficiently and error free without any interruption.