Resolving - "Your mailbox has exceeded one or more size limits set by your administrator." 

When you receive the above message, the size of you mailbox (collection of all your mail folders stored on the exchange server) has exceed our maximum allocation (50 MBs). This can only really occur for one reason, you have large (either number or size) attachments associated with your emails.  The simplest way to reduce the size of you mailbox is to remove these email messages or their attachments.  

To accomplish the reduction you need to identify the folders and the email messages that are contributing to the problem. Open Outlook and login to the system.  To start with you should identify which folders contain the majority of the large emails.  To do this in Outlook (main screen)  turn on the "Folder List" View (from the Main Menu select View, then click on Folder List, you may wish to turn off the Outlook Bar at this time also). With the Folder view window on the left side of the window, you will see (at the top) Outlook Today [mailbox your name].  Right click on this item then select properties and then click on the Folder Size button, you can also list the size of each folder separately (see link below).  

Once you have determined which folder or folders contain the bulk of the volume (this will usually be your inbox or your sent items folder), you need to go to these folders and insert the size field in the mail display window.  Then click on the size column to sort the folder by size.  The largest mail items will be at the top or the bottom depending on whether you selected ascending or descending order.  

A regular email message will be ~1KB or 1024 bytes in size, files with attachments can be 100KB to several MBs (100 to 1000 times as large).  Once you have identified these large emails, you have three choices:

1. delete the entire mail message - if the message has no further business or communication audit value simple delete the message (right click and select delete or drag to the Deleted Items folder)

2. open the message and delete the attachment - if the message is important but the attachment is available from else where, right click on the attachment and select delete, close the message and answer yes to save changes. This will leave the message without its attachment within the email system for historical purposes.

3. open the message, save the attachment and then delete - if the attachment is important and you do not have a local (outside the email system) copy, then right click the attachment and select save as and browse to the local (or file server) folder to save the file.  After saving, you can delete as in step #2 above.

These simple steps will help you maintain your mailbox with the generous limits set by CareGroup IS (50 MB). From real world experience, we know this setting will allow for more than 25,000 standard (no attachment) messages to be saved on the server.  This will support the vast majority of users. Please contact the help desk (4-8080) if you have any additional problems.

Reference Material Linked Above

Determining the size of an Outlook folder

1. Right-click the folder you want to determine the size for, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu.

2. Click Folder Size.

Add a column to the current view

1. On the View menu, point to Current View, and then click Customize Current View.

2. Click Fields.

3. In the Available fields box, click the field you want to add. (In this case the Size Field)

   If the field you want is not in the Available fields box, click a different field set in the Select available fields from box, and then click a field.

4. Click Add.

Sort a list of items

1. On the View menu, point to Current View, and then click a view that shows items in a table, card, or an icon view type.
   On the View menu, point to Current View, and then click Customize Current View.

2. Click Sort.

3. In the Sort items by box, click a field to sort by.

   If the field you want isn't in the Sort items by box, click a different field set in the Select available fields from box.

4. Click Ascending or Descending for the sort order.

5. To sort by an additional field, click a field in the Then by box.

Notes

• Sorting by more than one field sorts all items by the first field and then, within that sort, sorts again by the second field. For example, if you choose to sort alphabetically and then by number, the sort structure is "A 1 2 3, B 1 2 3."

• A column created by using a custom field or formula field can't be sorted.

• The abbreviations RE and FW in the Subject box are ignored when you sort messages alphabetically by subject.

Tip   If you are in a table view type, you can right-click a column heading to sort by the column or change the sort direction of the column. If you sort by multiple fields, you can hold down SHIFT and click the column heading to change the direction of the sort.