After the Exchange 2016 mailbox size is 50GB, Outlook cannot send or receive messages

Question

After the Exchange 2016 mailbox size is 50GB, Outlook cannot send or receive messages

Tony Mu 361

Hi

After a user has an Exchange 2016 mailbox size of more than 50GB, Outlook 2019 cannot send and receive emails, how to deal with this situation?

MARTINEZ BRENDA 5 Reputation points

2025-08-25T09:10:11.58+00:00

Cannot receive emails.need to sign in they said but cannot go through.

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MARTINEZ BRENDA 5 Reputation points

2025-08-25T09:10:11.58+00:00

Cannot receive emails.need to sign in they said but cannot go through.

Answer 1

Aholic Liang-MSFT 13,901 Microsoft External Staff

Hi @ Tony Mu,

Yes. You can resume sending and receiving mail by adjusting the quota limits for user mailboxes.

You can also enable an archive mailbox for this user and store messages in the archive mailbox for recovery as needed.

Use the EAC to enable the archive mailbox:

Go to the Recipients > Mailboxes.
Select the mailbox. In the details pane, under In-Place Archiving, click Enable.

Use EMS to enable archive mailbox :

Enable-Mailbox "Tony Smith" -Archive

For more information about archive mailboxes, refer to this link: In-Place Archiving in Exchange Server | Microsoft Learn

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Tony Mu 361 Reputation points

2023-08-21T12:55:49.8833333+00:00

Thank you for your reply, I have changed the mailbox to 60GB. Users can send and receive emails through OWA, currently only Outlook can't, I tried to find the answer, I saw the article that the default OST file size limiti of Outlook is 50GB, and also need to change Outlook, As shown in the following link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/769270/the-file-size-limits-of-pst-and-ost-in-outlook-off
Aholic Liang-MSFT 13,901 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2023-08-23T09:39:25.65+00:00

Hi @ Tony Mu，

Yes. When the PST or OST file of Outlook client reaches a preset size, it may prevent you from sending and receiving mail.

You can increase this limit above 50GB, but it is not recommended because it can cause performance issues with your computer.

When your computer can't handle larger OST files, you still need to use other techniques to reduce the size of OST files.

Therefore, I still recommend that you reduce the size of the primary mailbox by turning on the archive mailbox for your users and moving the data that you want to retain to this mailbox.
Morton Shulte 0 Reputation points

2025-08-25T09:50:18.0766667+00:00

thank you

Answer 2

Manu Philip 20,466 MVP Volunteer Moderator

You may need to adjust the quota limits and other associated values of the user mailbox by the following way. The following example increases the mailbox quota to 100GB, irrespective of the allowed quota set for the database in which the mailbox resides. Also, the command sets the quota warning message, send/receive restrictions.

Set-Mailbox username -UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults $false -IssueWarningQuota 90GB -ProhibitSendQuota 99GB -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 100GB

--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--

Tony Mu 361 Reputation points

2023-08-21T12:55:37.5366667+00:00

Thank you for your reply, I have changed the mailbox to 60GB. Users can send and receive emails through OWA, currently only Outlook can't, I tried to find the answer, I saw the article that the default OST file size limiti of Outlook is 50GB, and also need to change Outlook, As shown in the following link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/769270/the-file-size-limits-of-pst-and-ost-in-outlook-off

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After the Exchange 2016 mailbox size is 50GB, Outlook cannot send or receive messages

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