Increasing Mailbox Size In Exchange 2010

Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server developed by Microsoft. It is a reliable and flexible messaging platform that can lower messaging costs, increase productivity and safeguard your business with protection. There are four types of mailboxes available on the Exchange server 2010/2013/2016.

User Mailbox: User mailbox is owned by the user to send and receive email messages. This mailbox cannot be used for resource scheduling.

Room Mailbox: Room Mailbox is used for scheduling meetings. It can be configured to automatically process incoming requests.

Equipment Mailbox: Equipment Mailbox can be used as a resource for scheduling meetings.

Linked Mailbox: Linked Mailbox is accessed by the users in separate Exchange trusted Forest. There should be user account in the forest in which Exchange Server resides.

Mailbox Limits

There is no size limitation on individual mailboxes size in Exchange 2010. The main factors that limit the mailbox limits are Available disk space, Service level agreements, and backup and restore times. The number of items in a folder or folders (like inbox, contacts, calendar etc) that are being accessed on the server is the main factor that influenced the performance. So to make your Exchange Mailbox healthily working, you have to change Mailbox size in Exchange 2013. 

A large number of items in a folder needs longer operation like adding a new column to view, sorting a new column, find and searches. Sometimes these requests may overlap with other requests, results in a poor user experience.

Need For Increasing Mailbox Size In Exchange 2010

In many organizations, sometimes the Mailbox size is limited by the administrator to manage server storage capacity. It can create a problem for an individual to send or receive the new mail if his/her mailbox has reached that limit. In this case, there is a need to adjust mailbox size in Exchange 2010. The user can easily send and receive his/her messages by increasing mailbox size in Exchange 2010.

The user can set mailbox size in Exchange 2010. Exchange Server provides three options to increase mailbox size Exchange 2010 for all users. They are; Issue Warning At, Prohibit Send At and Prohibit Send and Receive At.

Follow underlying steps to increase mailbox size in Exchange server 2010.

• Open Exchange Management Console
• Click on Recipient Configuration and then click on Mailbox

  

  Exchange Management Console

• Select the Mailbox from the list of mailbox databases
• Right Click on Mailbox Database for whom you want to increase the limit
• Click on Properties from the contextual menu
• The Mailbox Database Properties dialog box will be displayed
• Click on Mailbox Settings Tab and then Click on Storage Quotas. The Storage Quotas dialog box will appear.
• Deselect the Use Mailbox database Defaults check box. This option enables you to set the Issue Warning, Prohibit Send and Prohibit Send and Receive limits.

  

  Mailbox Settings

• Change the limits according to your needs
• Click on OK.

Query: I have a need to set Mailbox quotas to 2GB. But since I have some users how already pass 2GB, I want to leave them out with no limit. (or to apply a 4GB limit to them). I have been playing for some time with WHERE parameter, but no success so far. So, how to change mailbox size in Exchange 2013? 

Increase Mailbox size in Exchange 2013 / 2016 For Single User

At some instance, you may need to increase mailbox size in Exchange 2013 for one user and not the other users. Following steps as mentioned down: 

1. Start the Exchange Control Panel.

2. Click ‘Recipients’, choose the desired mailbox for which you want to reset the size.

Exchange admin center

3. Click on Edit >> Mailbox usage >> More Options.

Mailbox usage settings

4. Change the quota setting that as per your requirements.

Increase Mailbox Size at Database Level in Exchange Server 2013 /2016

There can be many reasons due to which you need to set Mailbox size in Exchange 2013 for all Users at database level. And you can do this just by following below simple steps:

1. Start ECP, Click on Servers >> Database tab.

Exchange Database

                      

2. Select the database of which you want to change the size.

Mailbox database usage limits

3. Click on limits and set the required size for Database.

Note: Size limit will be applicable for all the mailboxes that are included in that Database.

Exchange Management Shell To Set the Storage Quotas for a Mailbox in Exchange 2016/13/10/07

If you are unable to follow the GUI method, you can go for Exchange Management Shell. PowerShell Command to change mailbox size in Exchange 2013 is as follows:

Set-Mailbox -Identity "Harry" -IssueWarningQuota 23.5gb -ProhibitSendQuota 23.55gb -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 24gb -UseDataQuotaDefaults $false

You can also recheck increased default mailbox size in Exchange 2013 by giving the command to EMS:

Get-Mailbox <identity> | f1 IssueWarningQuota,ProhibitSendQuota,ProhibitSendReceiveQuota, UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults

What if the Mailbox is Corrupted Due to its Large Size?

Above explained method can be used to increasing mailbox size in Exchange 2010. However, it may be possible that Exchange Server 2010 increase mailbox size not updating. Sometimes, Mailbox gets corrupted before its size is increased in Exchange 2016, in such a case you can use any commercial tool to recover your Mailbox data. The SysTools Exchange Mailbox Recovery tool is recommended by experts to recover Exchange Mailbox in the case of corruption. It recover even permanently deleted data and facilitates you to move Exchange database to PST, PDF, MSG, EML and Live Exchange Server.

 

This utility provides dual scanning mode (Quick & Advance scan) that easily removes corruption from Exchange database file with no data loss. To recover minimal corruption select the Quick scan and to recover highly corrupted EDB file choose the Advance scan. This option also recovers hard deleted mailboxes from data items from offline/dismounted Exchange database file. Users can use this option to recover & restore deleted mailbox in Exchange 2013 / 2016 in a hassle-freeway. 

 After recovery, users can easily import Exchange EDB file to new Server, O365. Also, users can easily convert Exchange EDB to PDF, MSG, PST, EML, HTML, MBOX file formats.  It auto-creates the export report which contains the success and fail counts of exported Exchange mailbox data.

Bringing It All Together

Now users have detailed information about various types of Exchange database mailboxes, its limits, needs and method for increasing mailbox size in Exchange 2010, 2013 and 2016 by using the solution provided here. If any of the mailboxes is severely corrupted or damaged then in that case users can use the advanced software described in the above section which easily recovers offline/dismounted EDB file automatically with no data loss in a simplified manner.