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I have a user who is extremely unwilling to work with me on this, and I need a little assistance.
The user has an Exchange account (on 2007 for what it's worth) The user checks her exchange account on 3 different Macs using Entourage. The user's deleted items folder can reach 16,000 items at any given time.

What I would like to know: Is there a way to setup a rule, possibly server side, possibly in OWA that will auto purge the deleted items folder?

The user never likes to close outlook and I would prefer a server side, or OWA fix to make sure it propogates down, and all the clients sync up properly.

Anyone?

Thanks

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  • Anyone? Quick bump, ttt.
    – user76211
    May 24, 2011 at 23:04

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How about setting up auto-archiving to delete the contents of the Deleted Items folder, on the copy of Outlook that's always open? When I say "always" open - even if it runs once a week, it's still going to do its job.

Auto-archiving is automatically enabled by default in Outlook. If it's been disabled, simply turn it back on again in the options. By default it's on, but not set to actually do anything.

Right-click the Deleted Items folder and set auto-archiving options specific to that folder. Set it to delete emails older than say... a week? (to ensure the user can still undelete accidentally deleted emails!) every 1 day and you're away. As the deleted items are stored in the mailbox which is on the server, the changes will sync across to the other copy of Outlook, Entourage and obviously OWA.

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  • Is there a way to set auto archive in Entourage on a Mac?
    – user76211
    May 26, 2011 at 17:52
  • @francisswest sorry not sure to be honest. A quick search with Google didn't help. Seems like an Apple script might be the way forward (whatever that is), but looks like it depends on the version of Mac OS and Entourage you have. Auto-archiving in Outlook would sync over to the Mac so you wouldn't really need to do it there at all.
    – Kez
    May 26, 2011 at 18:02
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You can setup mailbox limits (quotas) in Exchange. It's flexible and you can setup warning sizes as well as hard limits.

You can configure it to do stuff like (just) warn the user, or stop them from receiving more mail until it's cleaned to below the limit, or prevent them from sending AND receiving new mail until it's cleaned up, etc.

To get you started, here are 3 ways to set mailbox limits for Exchange 2003:

  • System Policies folder - New Mailbox policy.
  • Server (Icon) - Mailbox Store. If Exchange 2003 System Policies are set then the storage limits on the mailbox will be greyed out.
  • Individual user properties tab - It is possible to over-ride settings on the Mailbox store by configuring the account properties in Active Directory Users and Computers. Right click the user, properties, then click Exchange General tab.
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  • Sadly this would not be a diplomatic solution for one of the heads of this company.
    – user76211
    May 24, 2011 at 17:48
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    Yeah, I've run into this myself as well. :( The option may be to set up a time to teach them how to clean out their mailboxes. I don't know if Entourage has an equivalent to Outlook's "Mailbox Cleanup Wizard" or it's auto-archiving system. If nothing else it will give you a chance to convince them to empty it once. :)
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    May 25, 2011 at 12:39
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I think I would create a retention policy that deletes messages from Deleted Items based on their age, and then apply this retention policy to just that one user.

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What about using Outlook 2011 on their Mac?

I have someone that bought it becuase Entourage and Apple Mail were not able to see shared calendars.

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You can set the Apple Mail to auto-delete the items in the Trash folder.

Go to: Apple Mail / Preferences / Accounts / Accounts / Mailbox Behaviors

At the bottom, you can select a time frame for deletion. (I like using one month)

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