The mailbox size restrictions are as follows.

• 20MB the user will get notifications that they are approaching the size restrictions
• 25MB the user will be unable to send e-mail. (They will still receive e-mail)

The first step is to find the e-mail(s) that is putting them over the limit, whether it is one large message, or a large volume of smaller e-mails. Each circumstance may be handled differently. It is important to first find the e-mail(s) that is the problem before helping the user decide how to handle it.

Show the size of e-mail(s) in a folder.
(This will have to be performed in each folder until the culprit(s) is found)

• Highlight the folder you are checking e-mail sizes.
• In the 'View' drop down menu, select 'Current View / Define Views...'
• Click the 'Modify' button in the 'Define Views for ??????' window
• Click the 'Fields' button in the 'View Summary' window
• In the 'Show Fields' window, highlight 'Size' in the 'Available Fields' windowpane and click the 'Add' button. This should place the 'Size' field into the 'Show these fields in this order:' windowpane.
• Click 'Ok' (2 times)
• Click the 'Close' button in the 'Define Views for ??????' window.

You will now see the size of each piece of e-mail within the folder you just defined. You can repeat the previous steps for each folder (and sub-folder) in the users mailbox. If there is one very large piece of e-mail found in one of the users folders, you could have the users move that e-mail to their .pst file or have them save the attachment off to their home drive and delete the e-mail. If there is just a large volume of fairly large e-mails then it is probably easiest to have the user move all the large e-mails (or a whole folder) to the .pst file. The .pst file will be a set of folders below the mailbox called 'Personal Folders'. The e-mail in the .pst file is not held against the users mailbox size restriction. If the user does not have a .pst you will have to assist them in creating one (Please see the instructions on creating Personal Folders.)

• Saving off an e-mail attachment and deleting the e-mail.
• Highlight the e-mail with the attachment.
• In the 'File' drop down menu, select the attachment name from the 'Save Attachments' sub-menu.
• In the 'Save Attachment' window, locate the users home drive and select a location to save the attachment.
• Delete the e-mail from the mailbox.
• Repeat these steps as necessary to bring the mailbox below 20 megabytes.

Moving e-mail or folders to Personal Folders (.pst)

• Highlight the message(s) or folder you wish to move.
• Right click on the highlighted e-mail(s) or folder.
• Select 'Move to Folder' from the pop-up menu.
• In the 'Move Items' window, select the new location within the Personal Folders and click 'Ok'

The selected items should no longer exist in the mailbox and should be available in the Personal folders.  Repeat these steps as necessary to bring the mailbox below 20 megabytes.

After completing either method stated above, the mailbox should be smaller than 20 megabytes and the user should be able to send e-mail. Ensure the user sends a test message to verify. You may need to check the size of the users mailbox in Exchange Administrator to verify mailbox size (Please see instructions for checking mailbox size.) If the mailbox is still over 20 megabytes, the following describes more places to check for large items.

Additional places to look for large mailbox items.

• Deleted Items:
  Be sure the user empties their 'Deleted Items' folder.

• Journal:
  Journaling is turned off by default, but the user may have turned it on. Journaling is a very big space hog. Delete any Journal entries and, if necessary, turn off Journaling.

• Sent Items:
  Sent Items can get out of hand very quickly. All e-mail the user has sent is copied into the 'Sent Items' folder and this can get quite large. Many users use the "sent Items' folder as proof of e-mail sent and will not want to delete them. If the user does not need them, just delete everything in the 'Sent Items' folder. Be sure to empty the 'Deleted Items' folder again. You can create a folder in the .pst file for their sent items and move these messages to this folder.