Mailbox Statistics Test

Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to view the top-10 users, in terms of their mailbox size.

This measure is computed using the following formula:

[{Total mailbox size in the current measurement period (-) Total mailbox size in the last measurement period} / Total mailbox size in the last measurement period]*100

If the value of this measure is increasing consistently and is rapidly approaching 100%, it is a clear indication that one/more users are over-utilizing their mailbox storage. To know who those users are, use the detailed diagnosis of the Total mailbox size measure. This will point you to the top-10 users with large-sized mailboxes.

A user receives a Warning notification by email if his/her mailbox is approaching the maximum size limit. This warning is intended to encourage users to delete unwanted mail.

To know which users' mailboxes are about to run out of storage space soon, use the detailed diagnosis of this measure. The current size of each mailbox and the Warning quota set for that mailbox is also displayed, so that administrators can understand how soon each mailbox will be running out of space.

When an employee leaves your organization (or goes on an extended leave of absence), you can remove their Office 365 account. The employee's mailbox data is retained for 30 days after the account is removed. During this period, you can still recover the mailbox data by undeleting the account. After 30 days, the data is permanently removed. But if your organization needs to retain mailbox content for former employees, you can turn the mailbox into an inactive mailbox by placing the mailbox on Litigation Hold or applying an Office 365 retention policy to the mailbox in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center and then removing the corresponding Office 365 account. The contents of an inactive mailbox are retained for the duration of the Litigation Hold placed on the mailbox or the retention period of the Office 365 retention policy applied to it before the mailbox was deleted. You can still recover the corresponding user account for a 30-day period. However, after 30 days, the inactive mailbox is retained in Office 365 until the hold or retention policy is removed.

By observing the variations to the Inactive mailboxes size measure over time, you can figure out if your inactive mailboxes are growing in size abnormally and draining valuable storage space. If this is the case, then you may want to change the hold duration of the Litigation Hold or Office 365 retention policy applied to the inactive mailbox, or completely remove the Litigation Hold or retention policy applied to that mailbox. This will ensure that the email contents are not retained for much longer, and are instead, deleted permanently. This will release storage space.

An archive mailbox is a specialized mailbox that appears alongside the users’ primary mailbox folders in Outlook or Outlook Web App.  

Users can drag and drop messages from .pst files into the archive, for easy online access. Users can also move email items from the primary mailbox to the archive mailbox automatically, using Archive Polices, to reduce the size and improve the performance of the primary mailbox.

Users can restore items they have deleted from any email folder in their archive. When an item is deleted, it is kept in the archive’s Deleted Items folder. It remains there until it is manually removed by the user, or automatically removed by retention policies.

If the Archive mailboxes size measure reveals that the archive mailboxes are growing in abnormally in size, it could mean one or both of the following:

• User mailboxes are rapidly running out of space, owing to which many emails have been moved to the archive mailboxes, thereby eroding the archive space;
• The Deleted Items folder of the archive mailboxes is rapidly filling up, but is not being emptied at the same pace either manually or by the retention policy

To make more space in the archive mailboxes, you may want to consider manually removing emails from the mailboxes or their Deleted Items folder, or change the retention policy of the Deleted Items folder.

The idea of the Clutter feature is to take “low-priority” emails and automatically move them out of your inbox into another folder. The thought is if there is a particular type of email you rarely read, but isn’t junk/spam, the message will be filed away into a folder where you can review it later. In order to achieve this goal, Exchange Online needs to be able to watch your behavior for a period of time before it can be “trained” on what to identify as clutter.

Clutter is now enabled by default for all mailboxes. Users can disable Clutter themselves via “Options” within OWA. Otherwise, administrators can disable Clutter via PowerShell with the “Set-Clutter” cmdlet.

A user receives a prohibit-send notification email when the mailbox size limit is reached. The user cannot send new messages until enough email is deleted to bring the mailbox below the size limit..

To know which users' mailboxes have reached their prohibit-send limit, use the detailed diagnosis of this measure. THe current size of each mailbox and the Prohibit Send quota set for that mailbox is also displayed, so that administrators can understand why the Prohibit-send notification was sent. Administrators can then urge the concerned users to quickly clear up space in their mailboxes by either manually deleting mails or moving mails to archive mailboxes.

A user receives a prohibit send/receive notification email when the mailbox size limit is reached. Subsequently, Exchange Online rejects any incoming mail when the mailbox size limit is reached, and sends a non-delivery report (NDR) to the sender. The sender has the option to try resending the mail later. To receive messages again, the user must delete email until the mailbox is below the size limit.

To know which users' mailboxes have reached their prohibit send/receive limit, use the detailed diagnosis of this measure. The current size of each mailbox and the Prohibit Send/Receive quota set for that mailbox is also displayed, so that administrators can understand why the Prohibit Send/Receive notification was sent.

The Recoverable Items folder contains items deleted by Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office Outlook Web App users or by the Mailbox Assistant. The duration that deleted items remain in this folder is based on the deleted item retention settings configured for the mailbox database or the mailbox. By default, a mailbox database is configured to retain deleted items for 14 days, and the Recoverable Items warning quota and Recoverable Items quota are set to 20 gigabytes (GB) and 30 GB respectively. However, if In-Place Hold or Litigation Hold is enabled for the mailbox, the Recoverable Items folder can accumulate deleted items beyond the specified retention period and can also maintain different versions of modified mailbox items.

To know which users' mailboxes have reached their recoverable items limit, use the detailed diagnosis of this measure. The current size of the deleted items, the count of deleted items and the recoverabe items quota set for that mailbox is also displayed, so that administrators can understand which mailboxes are nearing recoverable items quota.