How long to delet messages?

[BlakeK]

Exchange 5.5 server, Outlook 2003 client
Trying to delete the items in my "Sent Items" folder.
Highlighted all messages, and clicked "delete".
It's been running (hourglass) for over 2 hours!
How long does it take just to delete messages?
Shouldn't this be a fairly quick task?
The folder has close to 200,000 messages in it.
Even though, it's not like I'm asking the machine to low level format a drive, just basically drop the pointers to the messages, and mark the space as unused, right?
Thanks for any info you can provide, as to how long I should expect this to take.
Server is running Win2K3 Server OS, Dual 3.2Ghz Xeons, 2GB RAM, and supporting about 25 other users. Any other info that would be helpful, let me know and I can provide.

 

[DestinysDream]

That is alot of messages and your machine has to update with the server. You should hold down the shift key and hit delete or you could talk to the exchange administrator and have them run a Clean mailbox on anything that is older then X amount of days. That will save you some time because it is at server level.

If anyone calls and says "I know a little something about computers" just tell them to reformat it.

 

[zbnet]

I had the same experience (with OL2K) and an Inbox that had roughly the same quantity of message in it (the previous admin had set up notifications on the IMS and then hadn't logged into the account for 2 years!).

It does take a long time. Using shift-delete is a good suggestion - at least they only get deleted once that way.

You could try deleting them in small batches, although it will still take a long time.

Personally I'd archive only the Sent Items folder using ExMerge, but this is an admin tool.