How do I reduce an O365 mailbox size?

[thecomputerguy]

I have a client who was on business premium then last year we bumped him up to E3 for the 100GB storage and now he's already maxing out the 100GB mailbox.

What is the correct way to get this mailbox down to a manageable size without losing the data in the mailbox?

Edit: I know that Outlook has the archiving tool built in but how does that work with Cached Exchange Mode?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Set up an archive and deletion policy for mailboxes in your organization
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/set-up-an-archive-and-deletion-policy-for-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide

 

[callthatgirl]

Do what I do, create local PST by year and start moving email out. Open PST in Outlook to make the client happy they can still search.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Do what I do, create local PST by year and start moving email out. Open PST in Outlook to make the client happy they can still search.

You just create a PST and call it...

2019
- Inbox
- Sent Box

Then you just sort and goto the corresponding year select the chunk and drag and drop it?

Doesn't cached exchange mode cause issues with this since Outlook may only have about a years worth of mail in it?

 

[callthatgirl]

This is not an easy job by any means, it's usually an all day'er for me, just to jump in and grab the mail. If the email is set to 1 year, then you can grab the recent and move to the year PST.

I do this
2019
Inbox
Sent
Deleted
then any folders that are old.

 

[thecomputerguy]

This is not an easy job by any means, it's usually an all day'er for me, just to jump in and grab the mail. If the email is set to 1 year, then you can grab the recent and move to the year PST.

I do this
2019
Inbox
Sent
Deleted
then any folders that are old.

Yeah I mean what if the mailbox has 7 years of email in it?

 

[callthatgirl]

You might need to slide to more than 1 year too for this project.

 

[thecomputerguy]

You might need to slide to more than 1 year too for this project.

Yeah I'm not sure I want 100GB of email downloaded onto the system, I'd imagine trying this with Cache'd mode off would be a complete nightmare though.

 

[callthatgirl]

Typically, people have less mail in 2013 then they have now, so you can maybe leave that and just get down the last 3 years

 

[callthatgirl]

Yeah, it's a nightmare either way. I mean, people can get a 2nd mailbox too for this, I have some clients doing that because they want it all in the cloud.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Typically, people have less mail in 2013 then they have now, so you can maybe leave that and just get down the last 3 years

View attachment 11822

Not a bad idea

I know the retention policy is the "correct" way to do it ... just seems overly complicated

 

[Fred Claus]

I'd follow any directions Lisa gives this is her area of expertise. One thing I do personally though is look at the data in the email box. Do I need it? Do I just need the information? I have an Evernote account that I save emails to that I don't need the physical email but I did need the data.

Another thing I've seen some people do is use the Outlook Desktop app and make an offline folder to save mail to. It's only available on that one computer but at least it's not eating up storage space in the email account.

 

[callthatgirl]

You can offer the client both options, most of mine want the data off so there is room in the future. One of my clients wanted a 2nd mailbox and another wanted the max space, 100 gig. He'll max that out in no time, then we're back to new decisions lol.

Thanks Fred! I just do what the client wants and I explain how it works, most want my option.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I don't deal with 1990's PST files....say the workstation blows a hard drive, whoops..gone.
Office 365 E plans have unlimited archiving.

Easy peasy to automate it....set an auto archive rule, say...any email older than blah blah blah..move to archive.
Keeps folder layout, all that stuff. Automates it. And it's kept safe up there! Easy to search, etc.

 

[callthatgirl]

Brian, the PST are backed up lol.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I don't deal with 1990's PST files....say the workstation blows a hard drive, whoops..gone.
Office 365 E plans have unlimited archiving.

Easy peasy to automate it....set an auto archive rule, say...any email older than blah blah blah..move to archive.
Keeps folder layout, all that stuff. Automates it. And it's kept safe up there! Easy to search, etc.

This, plus you get access from any device be it phone, Outlook on the web, your laptop and your desktop, and you can delegate access to others.

And as a tech you learn a skill that far too many of your competitors don’t have. That’s always a plus.

 

[Fred Claus]

Lisa,

If they were to archive the old emails. is there a way to look at them without restoring?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

365's auto archiving automatically creates a new mailbox folder within your Outlook..it's managed by the mail server. You don't have to do anything to Outlook to see it...which makes it wonderfully easy for the Admin to manage. Just setup the automatic rule, make it global for everyone, or...you can enable it individually if you want. All done simply in the web admin of each tenant. In short time once enabled, it automatically shows up in each users Outlook (you don't have to go add it, they don't have to go add it..it just shows up). And it's there for their use to go find historical emails.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Brian, the PST are backed up lol.

If someone setup backup for the workstation. But it's yet another step that's not necessary. If you leave things native to O365...you really don't have to backup a workstation. With OneDrive handling Docs and Desktop....and with email in a proper modern format, and my other files in Teams/SP, I could light my laptop on fire each day of the week, get another one each day, sign in..BOOM ..all my important data is right back on the new laptop each day. With nothing but native 365 apps. I have zero fear of losing any data. No extra steps taken, and it's all store in one place, effectively documented by the process. All equally readable from multiple/separate devices (which..these days, is pretty common...versus back in the 90's when people just had 1x computer).

With the old PST format (meant for POP...not MAPI)...I can't do the above if any mail in that old PST was important to me. So I'd have to deal with how to back that up, it creates a separate task, a separate expense, a separate thing to monitor. And when configuring Outlook the next day on my brand new laptop to replace the one I lit on fire...it's an extra step to add it back into Outlook..once I've done that extra step to restore it from backup.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yeah any use of PST files at all with M365 services is a misuse of the platform.

You enable archiving for the mailbox, you configure your retention and archiving policies... these include MANDATORY DELETION timers. If you want to go beyond those, you use a BDR solution of some sort to replicate it elsewhere. Https://protection.office.com has all of the settings.

Configure the automation... let the automation do the lifting. If your job is replicating the automation manually... you need a new job.

The difficulty here is working with customers to determine what those policies actually are, a great many of them just want to keep things forever... and that isn't possible in all cases.