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Have you tried 'not' keeping every email you've ever sent and received?

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  • Have you tried 'not' keeping every email you've ever sent and received?

    I so wish our client company would let us impose mailbox size limits...

    We just went live with an email migration (local Exchange server to cloud) yesterday, which has gone a lot harder than it needed due to their email server being on its last legs. Basically we were afraid to make any changes to it that would have made things alot easier. No updating, no changes. We were afraid that it would die if we looked at it wrong.

    Most of the last few weeks have been filled with me putting out fires on site, especially yesterday. But I haven't been on site for more than 15 minutes (not even enough time for my daily backup check) when I'm getting yelled at. Basically, after the migration, Outlook needs to index the users' mailboxes again. The user who's upset with me has 84k emails to index.

    I'm supposed to know how long this is going to take, apparently, and I've got nothing. As I'm trying to get two words out to try to explain why I can't make an estimate: "Can't you google it? Call Microsoft! Call your coworkers!" (I'm the earliest one working btw). It varies from mailbox to mailbox and from system to system, and with 84k emails, I can't make an estimate, and neither can anybody else.

    All the while I'm fighting back the urge to scream at her "DELETE AN EMAIL EVERY NOW AND AGAIN!"

    Urgh.

    Bonus: During the migration, the largest mailbox I saw was around 8GB, looking forward to his call [/sarcasm].
    Pretend there's something here that sounds insightful, but is really just some pseudo-intellectual bull.

  • #2
    On the bonus one: Of course. All those cute puppy videos, locat GIFs, chainmails, viruses, and 50-person internal email chains where everyone uses Reply To All and quotes the entire 3 weeks' worth of messages, every time take up space! Priorities, man!
    "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
    "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
    "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
    "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
    "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
    "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
    Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
    "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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    • #3
      Quoth EricKei View Post
      On the bonus one: Of course. All those cute puppy videos, locat GIFs, chainmails, viruses, and 50-person internal email chains where everyone uses Reply To All and quotes the entire 3 weeks' worth of messages, every time take up space! Priorities, man!
      I haven't checked on that, but I wouldn't be surprised. I do know some of the users use their work email for personal use.
      Pretend there's something here that sounds insightful, but is really just some pseudo-intellectual bull.

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      • #4
        We don't have a size quota, but we do have a retention policy. Emails older than a certain point MUST be deleted per the policy handed down from our legal department. This helps (at least a little bit) to keep down the email count.


        Granted, it doesn't help a lot, considering I get probably 200+ emails a day...
        "If your day is filled with firefighting, you need to start taking the matches away from the toddlers…” - HM

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        • #5
          I'm sure some of our users are trying for your championship on daily email count. Honestly, I just wish that they had any policies at all other than "everything must be backed up."
          Pretend there's something here that sounds insightful, but is really just some pseudo-intellectual bull.

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          • #6
            Policy at my company is to keep all emails. I deal with money so I want proof on hand easily since almost all communications are done by email.

            But I archive my older emails so they're saved on my drive rather than in outlook. Well, older than 6 months or so. That and it avoids the mailbox from filling up; which is handy.

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            • #7
              Back a the accountingfirm, we didn't have any explicit policy, but it was wise to keep old emails simply because it was a financial services company. That, and, if an email was considered to be formally "part of a client's records," we had to hang on to it for 3 years anyway, even if we no longer did business with them.
              "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
              "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
              "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
              "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
              "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
              "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
              Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
              "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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              • #8
                How about archiving? The client gets to keep all old emails, while lessening the burden on your server.
                cindybubbles (👧 ❤️ 🎂 )

                Enter Cindyland here!

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                • #9
                  Quoth patiokitty View Post
                  Thanks to this thread I was prompted to go through my various personal emails and one work email to delete all unnecessary emails. Anything truly important will either be archived or printed out to be filed, but so far I have not found anything truly important enough to hold onto...

                  84K emails really boggles my mind. I can't imagine anybody having that many!
                  Ever tried going thru a gmail "archive" of the messages you've sent? When you hadn't realize that it kept them until after a year or so of using it?

                  It's insane. I gave up because there's no practical way of "saving my place" so I can come back to it later and resume where I left off.

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                  • #10
                    Quoth cindybubbles View Post
                    How about archiving? The client gets to keep all old emails, while lessening the burden on your server.
                    Well, here's the thing, we just set up the client with 2X, and are running their emails on there. We're basically trying to move them to dumb terminals as much as we can (and actually, I had an idea of trying to modify something like ChromeOS to be able to run 2X and a browser and nothing else off a RaspPi, which if I could get it working, my boss likes the idea).
                    Pretend there's something here that sounds insightful, but is really just some pseudo-intellectual bull.

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                    • #11
                      I have several users with 20gb+ mailboxes. They've been with the company 15+ years...so yeah, BIG fun if and when we ever migrate
                      Last edited by Apallo; 07-29-2013, 11:41 PM. Reason: addition

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                      • #12
                        Been there, migrated that. I particularly cringed at the ones that had a few things in their inbox (okay), a modest number of items in personal folders (passable)....and ~2500 messages in Deleted Items. Don't just delete it, purge your trash file now and then!
                        Cheap, fast, good. Pick two.
                        They want us to read minds, I want read/write.

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                        • #13
                          If you have people that keep everything, start by having a quiet word with legal. A lot of companies have, of late, adopted 'retention' policies that limit how long things can be retained by employees (basically, the lawyers want to destroy everything that they don't have to keep because then it can't be subpoenaed. And because it was destroyed in accordance with policy, no one can be accused of deliberately destroying evidence.)

                          While such policies can be annoying as heck in some ways, they can be very helpful in reducing the amount of e-mail on the servers. Especially if auto-delete rules are implemented.
                          Life: Reality TV for deities. - dalesys

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                          • #14
                            I currently have the other problem - A temp in a finance department has deleted audit trails of issues relating to current year stuff that has been 'solved'... yeah, just one problem - we need to prove it for audit when the 2013 accounts get done *next* year..

                            And I need some of them to solve current issues that aren't quite solved too...
                            I am so SO glad I was not present for this. There would have been an unpleasant duct tape incident. - Joi

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