Email Size Limits: Boost for High Profile Users in Exchange 2010

When dealing with business communications, managing Email Size Limits becomes crucial. Email serves as a pivotal Business Critical application within virtually every organization. Given this context, optimizing your Exchange infrastructure’s performance is a top priority. A strategic move in this endeavor involves regulating the average message size your users can send and receive.

How to use the EAC to configure storage quotas for a mailbox
- In the EAC, navigate to Recipients and then > Mailboxes.
- In the list of user mailboxes,
- click the mailbox that you want to change the storage quotas for,
- and then click Edit Edit icon.
- On the mailbox properties page,
- click Mailbox Usage, and then click More options.
- Click Customize the settings for this mailbox,
- and then configure the following boxes.

The value range for any of the storage quota settings is from 0 through 2047 gigabytes (GB).Managing Email Size Limits: In regard to Email Size Limits, a warning can be set at a specified storage threshold (in GB). This particular setting determines when users will receive a warning message from Exchange. When a user’s mailbox size approaches or surpasses the predefined value, they will be notified with a warning message. This proactive approach helps users stay informed about their mailbox usage.

Important: While handling Email Size Limits, keep in mind that the system sends the message for Issue warning quota to users only if the setting value exceeds 50% of Prohibit send quota value. For example, if you set the Prohibit send quota to 8 MB, you must set the Issue warning quota to at least 4 MB. The Issue warning quota message won’t be sent if you don’t.
Prohibit send at (GB) This box displays the prohibit send limit for the mailbox. If the mailbox size reaches or exceeds the specified limit, Exchange prevents the user from sending new messages and displays a descriptive error message.
Prohibit send and receive at (GB) This box displays the prohibit send and receive limit for the mailbox. If the mailbox size reaches or exceeds the specified limit, Exchange prevents the mailbox user from sending new messages and won’t deliver any new messages to the mailbox. The mailbox returns any sent messages to the sender, accompanied by a descriptive error message.
Click Save to save your changes.

Using the Shell to configure storage quotas for a mailbox

– This example sets the issue warning, prohibit send, and prohibit send and receive quotas for Joe Healy’s mailbox to 24.5 GB, 24.75 GB, and 25 GB, respectively.

Example 1: Set the UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults parameter to $false for utilizing custom mailbox settings instead of database defaults.

c:/>Set-Mailbox -Identity "Joe Healy" -IssueWarningQuota 24.5gb -ProhibitSendQuota 24.75gb -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 25gb -UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults $false

Example 2: This example sets the issue warning, prohibit send, and prohibit send and receive quotas for Ayla Kol’s mailbox to 900 megabytes (MB), 950 MB, and 1 GB, respectively, and configures the mailbox to use custom settings.
Set-Mailbox -Identity “Ayla Kol” -IssueWarningQuota 900mb -ProhibitSendQuota 950mb -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 1gb -UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults $false

How do you know this worked?
– To verify that you’ve successfully set the storage quotas for a mailbox, do one of the following:

Example 1: In the EAC,
Navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes.
– In the list of user mailboxes, click the mailbox you want to verify the storage quotas for, then click the Edit icon.
– Click Mailbox usage on the mailbox properties page, and then click More options.
– Ensure the Customize settings for this mailbox are selected.
– Verify the storage quota settings.

Example 2: Run the following command in the Shell.

c:/>Get-Mailbox <identity> | fl IssueWarningQuota,ProhibitSendQuota,ProhibitSendReceiveQuota,UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults

I hope you found this blog post helpful. Please let me know in the comment session if you have any questions.