Help with error message

[flw]

From my home personal email account, I send a email to my business account. I recieved the following back to my personal account on why it could not send the msg:

"e-mail message could not be delivered because
the user's mailfolder is full"

Is this the Indox only or does this also include subfolders under Inbox? What is the fix or workaround? I don't want to get into the habbit of just compacting the mail box because that will lead me to this same point later on.

So if I relocated a "Archieve" type of folder to the same level as the Inbox would this help or some other method of taking a whole folder off line that its size is not a stopping block.

I realize the speed will slow way down but until I'm ok (policy to hold onto mail for certain length of time) to purging older stuff, I need a solution. Help !

 

[josephdavis]

The error means that your entire work mailbox is full, including the inbox, all sub-directories, and every other directory in your mailbox. This is an all too common problem now days. Many people never clean out their email inbox, often times saving emails asking their co-workers when they want to go to lunch. My first suggestion is to do a search on your entire mailbox for the word 'lunch', you will be surprised how many emails you find. Second, set up an archive solution that moves your email out of your mailbox. I am not sure what type of email client you are using so I can't advise of a best solution for archiving. In general though, you don't need to archive your deleted items; many people make that mistake. Also, you should set your archive to run daily but only archive items that are X days old. Figure out how many days, weeks, months you are comfortable with archiving.

You may want to look in to an indexing solution as finding email that has been archived can be frustrating. I have used and like Copernic,

http://www.copernic.com

Good luck, and if you have any questions, let us know!

-Joe

http://joe.galactik.com

 

[58sniper]

Don't archive work email out of your mailbox. It removes it from the server, which means it's no longer backed up. It's not scanned for viruses, and it takes more room in a .pst file than it does in the mailbox.

.pst files should not be used in a business environment, shouldn't be stored on network drives, and have many known limitations.

The exact text you mention for the error message is slightly different than what we normally see for an Exchange message. Did you copy/paste that, or are you paraphrasing it?

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[flw]

The error msg was a copy and paste but I didn't copy everything.

I also use Outlook 2007 for the client with exchange as the mail server. I can also tweak the max mail box size but again thats only a short term fix.

 

[josephdavis]

If your organization does not have a proper archiving solution in place and you have many users, you must archive your email to a pst. Saving the pst on a file server which is backed up and insuring that your local anti-virus is up-to-date will alleviate the problems mentioned. I agree that pst files have many issues, the biggest being size limitation, but when a proper enterprise solution is not in place, you have to do something. Exchange is limited in the size of the entire mail store so leaving the email on the server is also not a permanent solution. Also, an individual Exchange mailbox is limited in size (not the one set by the administrator), if an Exchange mailbox is near 2gb, you can bet that your email will be slow and searching the mailbox will not prove profitable.

In the end, my questions to the post originator are these:

1) How many users do you have on your exchange server?
2) Do you have access to change the mailbox limit?
3) Do you have the "power" to purchase an enterprise archiving solution?
4) How often do you go through your email and clean out any old or unimportant email?




-Joe

http://joe.galactik.com

 

[58sniper]

Saving the pst on a file server which is backed up and insuring that your local anti-virus is up-to-date will alleviate the problems mentioned.

Except that Microsoft doesn't support that, and advises NOT to do that.

Exchange is limited in the size of the entire mail store

assuming Standard edition. Enterprise is unlimited.

Also, an individual Exchange mailbox is limited in size (not the one set by the administrator)

It's only limited by the mailbox store limits (not including administrator configured limits). Running Enterprise, a mailbox could be (and I've seen them) several hundred GB.

if an Exchange mailbox is near 2gb, you can bet that your email will be slow and searching the mailbox will not prove profitable.

That is completely untrue. There are known performance issues with the number of items in default folders, but I've seen 10GB mailboxes work just as fast as a 1MB mailbox. A properly configured server should not have a problem with that.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[josephdavis]

I stand corrected on all accounts. My experience with Exchange is obviously not as extended as Pat's. I apologize for the confusion I may have caused.

-Joe

http://joe.galactik.com

 

[flw]

I have the standard edition on Win03 R2.

1) How many users do you have on your exchange server?

About 35.

2) Do you have access to change the mailbox limit?

Yes, but I'm not familar with exchange very well at all. I can follow any instuctions though. :>

3) Do you have the "power" to purchase an enterprise archiving solution? No.

4) How often do you go through your email and clean out any old or unimportant email? I usually look around weekly and my mail box is not the largest ( by total number of items or size in mb/gb) by far, so I can only assume I'm getting either a individual message error or a error for the entire post office at that moment in time (since its always changing in total size and total number of items.

So generally, how can I check the settings of the mail store and general mail box limits via Exchange System Manager

 

[58sniper]

1. That's not bad.
2. [google]exchange 2003 mailbox size limit[/google]
3. N/A
4. How big is your mailbox, and what are the limits set to?

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP