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I wonder if any of you have a good solution to this scenario. My mailbox is almost full on the server. Outlook 2013 by default is set to only download 12 months of mail, but I have a few years back stored on the server. The Outlook clean up tools only seem to affect the downloaded mail, so how do I effectively clean my mailbox?

I could tell Outlook to download ALL of my mail, which I’ve done in the past when I ran into this, but it’s not an elegant solution and it defeats the purpose of the 12 month sync.

After a lot of Google searching I can’t seem to find any built in mechanisms in Exchange (2007) that could be used to clean up my Mailbox. It would be nice to avoid a third party solution if possible.

OWA doesn’t seem to have any mechanism for this that I can see.

Any thoughts? Am I missing something or is this a loop hole?

skinneejoe
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  • Disable cached mode, clean up, turn on 12 month cache again. Drink beer. – BlueCompute May 19 '15 at 13:53
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    What do you mean your mailbox is almost full? There are no default mailbox size limits in Exchange 2007. Are you saying that there's a mailbox size limit on your mailbox? If so, why aren't you archiving older mail? It also sounds like you're using POP to connect to your mailbox, why are you doing that with Exchange? – joeqwerty May 19 '15 at 14:40
  • @BlueCompute - this was suggested to me in another forum, probably is the best solution. Too bad though, because I wouldn't call it elegant, and I think some end users would be frustrated by having to do that. I really wish Outlook's clean up tools could just query the entire server, or at least have a checkbox to provide that option. Thanks! –  May 19 '15 at 15:10
  • @joeqwerty - Not using POP, using an Exchange connection. There definitely are default mailbox size limits in Exchange 2007 - I have hit them. I have not been auto archiving because I prefer to just keep a couple years worth of mail in my exchange inbox and then clean it up when it gets too large. –  May 19 '15 at 15:12
  • Which leaves the obvious question, why do you like to store 2 years of mail but only ever display 1 year of it in Outlook? I think the lack of elegance may lie in the implementation rather than the Outlook / Exchange model. – BlueCompute May 19 '15 at 15:23
  • Unless this is SBS there is no `default` mailbox size limit in Exchange Server 2007. Your Exchange administrator may have set limits, but you'd have to ask them in order to verify that. I'm not understanding what you mean about `downloading` your email. If you're using a native Outlook/Exchange connection then your email isn't `downloaded` to Outlook except in the case of cached mode and an OST file. Is that how you have Outlook configured? With an OST file, mail isn't downloaded `off` of the server. Your OST file is an exact local copy of your mailbox, no more no less. – joeqwerty May 19 '15 at 15:55
  • It is Small Business Server. –  May 19 '15 at 18:50
  • @joeqwerty - In Outlook 2013 the OST has the option to download a portion of your mailbox, see here: http://www.theucguy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ControlOSTsizeinOutlook2013.jpg?641423 –  May 19 '15 at 20:15
  • @BlueCompute - You can tell Outlook 2013 to download a year's worth of mail to the OST. However, when you perform a search you can actually query the server. Unfortunately, the mailbox clean up tools do not query the server. –  May 19 '15 at 20:17
  • OK, but downloading 12 months of email to the OST files doesn't remove it from the server, so I'm not seeing how the OST file is related to cleaning up the actual mailbox. – joeqwerty May 19 '15 at 20:20
  • Because the mail cleanup options won't touch your server mailbox if you have an OST. They will only clean the OST. –  May 19 '15 at 23:51

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Use the mailbox cleanup tools from File > Cleanup Tools > Mailbox Cleanup

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BlueCompute
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  • This does not answer the original problem. The mailbox clean up tools do not touch your server mailbox if you have an OST. – skinneejoe May 20 '15 at 12:53