IT ISSUE · MICROSOFT 365 AND COLLABORATION
Mailbox full
Rarely full of the mail you can see, which is why emptying the deleted folder changes nothing.A full mailbox is rarely full of the mail somebody can see. The space is more often taken by an archive nobody knew was enabled, or by copies of deleted items being retained on purpose, which is why emptying the deleted folder so often changes nothing.
What you may notice
- Sending stops while receiving continues, or the reverse.
- A warning appears about the mailbox size.
- Deleting large messages frees almost nothing.
- The online mailbox and the copy in Outlook disagree.
- It affects one person rather than everybody.
Find out where the space went before removing anything
We check the actual size and what is holding it, the archive, the retention settings, the licence limit that applies and whether a local copy is involved.
The person clearing their inbox to get working again isn't usually the person who knows what the business is obliged to keep. Retention settings exist because somebody decided something had to be retained, and a bulk delete under time pressure is how that decision gets quietly reversed. It is worth five minutes to find out which rules apply before anyone starts selecting by date.