Outlook 2003 mailbox size

Our users are configured to connect to the exchange server (Exchange 2003 Enterprise) using cached mode. Therefore all the mailbox data (messages) stay on the server.

Problem Description

A user's mailbox size on server (Exchange Ent) is close to 24GB, therefore the local outlook .ost file (in user's computer) reached the maximum large file size that by default outlook supports and the user was getting the Mailbox Cleanup window each time he was trying to use Outlook 2003.

"You have exceeded the size limit on your mailbox"



No operations send/receive were available.

The Options were

• To empty deleted messages.
• Delete conflicts size.
• Enable auto archive.

All the above done. But still the problem was not resolved fully, I had somehow to increase the file size for the .ost file.

Resolution
The solution came by following the article from Microsoft Support bellow. I increased the Maximum Large File Size for Outlook by defining a new Policy as described in the bellow.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832925/en-us?spid=2520&sid=1379

Note:
The path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ was there but nothing else related with Office so I had to create the following registry keys

• Office
  
• 11.0
• Outlook
• PST

So at end I had

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\PST

After that I followed the provided instructions, specified the following values

• MaxLargeFileSize: 30720 (Decimal)
• WarnLargeFileSize: 29696 (Decimal)

and everything worked fine.

Dimitris