If you store copies of messages on the server, there may be a chance that you'll receive an email alert with this error.

Your mailbox has exceeded one or more size limits set by your administrator.
Your mailbox size is _____ KB.

Mailbox size limits:

You will receive a warning when your mailbox reaches _______ KB.You may not be able to send or receive new mail until you reduce your mailbox size. To make more space available, delete any items that you are no longer using or move them to your personal folder file (.pst). Items in all of your mailbox folders including the Deleted Items and Sent Items folders count against your size limit. You must empty the Deleted Items folder after deleting items or the space will not be freed. See client Help for more information.

The Quick Fix

Log into your webmail account, and delete old email that has been storing up. When in webmail, you are viewing the messages that are actually on the server. That means the "Sent Folder", the "Trash Can", and any folders you've created that have mail in them are taking up space.

You can access your webmail by opening your internet browser and typing this address into the address bar (note: the address bar is not the same as the search bar)

http://webmail.mydomain.com - with 'mydomain' being the domain in your email address

username: your full email address
password: your password for that email address

Prevent Exceeding Your Mailbox Size

In your mail client (Outlook), under that email account settings:

1. Switch on the option to "Remove email from the server after x amount of days". 5 days or less is suggested.
2. Switch on the option "Remove from server when deleted from 'Deleted Items'". When you empty your email trash bin, Outlook will remove those messages from the server.

Why This Happens

Email is stored in one of two places, and sometimes both.

If you access your email using an email client such as Outlook, you are downloading email off of the server and storing it on your local machine. Usually when you download that mail, your email client (Outlook) will remove the copy from the server to keep space open for new incoming messages.

This can pose a problem for certain users, as they need to be able to access their email from multiple locations. In this instance, we'll set our email client to keep a copy of the message on the server, even after they've downloaded it to their local machine. That way the user can download that same email message from both their home and work computer.

The danger with storing a copy on the server, is that if the user receives alot of email and often has large file size attachments, the designated mail space gets taken up quickly. Once the mail quota is reached, the user will no longer be able to receive new email messages until room is freed up. Message senders will receive a bounceback email stating that the user mailbox is full and cannot receive their message.

Fortunately, we have the option of setting just how long messages are stored on the server. It is important that we use this feature whenever we store email on the server.

Access These Settings

Below is the option box as seen in Outlook 2003. At the bottom of the box is where these options can be found. You can get to this box by going to: Tools > Account Settings > Double click your email account listed > Click "More Settings" button > Click Advanced tab (seen below)