Re: Exchange/Outlook 2003 mailbox sizes - best practises

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Well... I have 91,000 items taking 6.4Gb's (but I consider myself an
exception to the norm :)

I religiously strip out attachments too, with some VBA code I found, and
modified to include deleting attachments. It's not the best, but it
works ok for me.

I'd like to see MS address this problem, as the way I see it on corp
LANs, many users don't have *that* many emails, they just leave the
attachments in there. Basically, email gets used as a file transfer
system (and email was never designed to be like that I'm sure).

I don't see an easy way of educating users either - as it does actually
work quite well to transfer docs and spreadsheets and the like (read:
it's easy). I've tried showing off Office Live to one group of users -
but naa... they just don't use it.

There's commercial stuff I'm sure, to save (and rename if necessary) and
then delete email attachments - but I've never hunted it out.

' Save all Attachments in an (open) email=3F
Sub SaveAttachments()
Dim objCurrentItem As Outlook.MailItem
Dim colAttachments As Outlook.Attachments
Dim objAttachment As Outlook.Attachment

Set objCurrentItem = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
Set colAttachments = objCurrentItem.Attachments
Set strFolderpath = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

For Each objAttachment In colAttachments
' objAttachment.SaveAsFile (strFolderpath.SpecialFolders("Desktop") &
"\" & objAttachment.FileName)
' MsgBox (strFolderpath.SpecialFolders("MyDocuments") & "\email
attachments\" & objAttachment.FileName)
objAttachment.SaveAsFile (strFolderpath.SpecialFolders
("MyDocuments") & "\email attachments\" & objAttachment.FileName)
Next

Set objAttachment = Nothing
Set colAttachments = Nothing
objCurrentItem.Close (olDiscard)
Set objCurrentItem = Nothing

End Sub
' Delete all Attachments in an (open) email=3F
Sub DeleteAttachments()
Dim objCurrentItem As Outlook.MailItem
Dim colAttachments As Outlook.Attachments
Dim objAttachment As Outlook.Attachment

Set objCurrentItem = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
Set colAttachments = objCurrentItem.Attachments
' Set strFolderpath = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

While colAttachments.Count > 0
colAttachments.Remove 1
Wend

Set objAttachment = Nothing
Set colAttachments = Nothing
objCurrentItem.Save
objCurrentItem.Close (olDiscard)
Set objCurrentItem = Nothing

End Sub

You need to drop the Outlook security settings a notch, but you'll work
that one out. I'm, sure the code is of no use to your user - he needs
educating!, perhaps Lanwench and Russ's info will be of more help there.


In article <gbral2$2jd6$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
says...
Thanks Lanwench, that's more what I was looking for.

I think I'll have another go and trying to explain it all to him tomorrow
afternoon.

It's catching him in a receptive mood that's the difficult bit.

His mailbox currently stands at 6.3GB and has over 50,000 items in it.

Jim.





"Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]"
<lanwench@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ehd1k2jIJHA.2256@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi All,

I have a problem with a customer.

SBS2003 R2, just upgraded from and SBS2000.

About 20 users.

Exchange maibox store is almost at 16GB at the moment, hence the
upgrade to SBS 2003.

Problem:

One user, the MD, has an individual mailbox which is almost 7GB on
it's own !

Ah. Well, everyone needs quotas in Standard edition - unless they have
server-side archive software.

He also opens up an archive.pst file across the LAN which is around
4GB in size.

This is not supported. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019.
Also see
http://www.exchangefaq.org/faq/Exchange-5.5/Why-PST-=-BAD-/q/Why-PST-=-BAD/qid/1209
PST files should be shunned entirely. You can't manage the data in them.
If the data is important enough to keep, it belongs on the server.


Needless to say he finds that he has a very poorly performing Outlook
experience.
Plus others say that the network grinds to a halt on the days that he
is in the office.

He also finds working remotely over a VPN a very slow painful
experience.

How did he get here ?

That's pretty obvious! :)

Well he stores practically everything that he does into his mailbox
rather than storing it in folders on the server.

Exchange is not a file server. I can't find you any documentation on that
because I don't know of any. We all just know this because we know it. I
also don't know of any that states that Exchange is not a toaster-oven,
for similar reasons.

basically he finds it a lot easier as he say sthat verything is always
with him when he's out of the office.

Sure.

I know it's an education issue but he just won't listen.

Write up your profesional opinion and print it out and make him sign it.
When something crashes you can show it to him, quietly. and you're blamed
for iut, you can whip it out.

He has thousands and thousands of subfolders in his mailbox.

Hell, at least he makes subfolders.
Don't let users create subfolders under built-in folders. Create a
top-level folder like "_User's Saved Items" and have all subfolders
created there. If you ever want to use mailbox management (managed folders
in E2008) on the inbox, sent items, whatnot, it will act on all subfolders
as well. And even right now, it's a lot easier to do something with a
custom parent folder than with subfolders that you'd have to drag/move
individually.


What I'm after is any good links to any reference or best practices
information that I can wave at him to try and make him understand that
he's killing the LAN and server performance.

Well, he's *seeing* the results right now, isn't he? And so are his staff.

The size of the mailbox is an issue only because you use Standard. In
Enterprise, you could grow the store pretty much as large as you want, as
long as you have the hardware to support it (and the backup media...and
can deal with the long backup and restore times). In Enterprise you could
put his mailbox into its own storage group, too.

The number of items in any given folder is actually a bigger issue than
the size of the mailbox. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905803 for
more info.

Does anyone know of any good reference material or have any comments/
advice on this.

Jim.






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