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Pamu avatar image
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Pamu asked

Storage limit of a Shared Mailbox

Hi Everyone,

I have a shared mailbox which is having a storage quota of 100GB
(which means it's licensed as normally a shared mailbox gives a limit of 50GB? )

and currently it's around 99% used and almost limit exceeded.

What is the available option for me here to free up some space?
Deleting anything isn't an option either.

Thanks a mil in advance for the help.

office-exchange-server-administration
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1 Answer

michev avatar image
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michev answered Pamu commented

Well if you don't want to delete anything, your only option is to add more storage. Assign an Exchange Online Plan 2 license to the mailbox and provision an online archive, the retention policy will kick in and start freeing up space in the primary mailbox. Exchange Online Plan 1 won't help in your scenario, as the quota you get with it is 100GB total for the main mailbox and archive.

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Thanks for the quick reply @michev !

the usage of the shared mailbox shows that it is 100GB (99GB). This means that already the license has been applied right?

98192-capture.png



  • you mean when it's Exchange online plan 1 it is 50GB for the main mailbox and 50GB for the in-place archive?
    and what about the Exchange online plan 2 ? what's the quota available for main and in-place archive?

I'm sorry, I am new o this and how to check whether a license is applied for the shared mailbox? I thought a license is applied as the shared mailbox is 100GB in size according to the above picture as usually a shared mailbox is of 50GB in size

Can you please help me out?

Thanks gain for your help

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capture.png (6.0 KiB)

There was a bug/"known issue" with shared mailboxes previously, where you could get 100GB quota even without license, but that no longer applies. In your case only Exchange Online Plan 2 is an option, and it comes with 100GB primary mailbox and "unlimited" archive. Details are here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-limits#mailbox-storage-limits
To apply the license, go to the Microsoft 365 Admin center and locate the user object corresponding to the shared mailbox. Once you do that, enable an archive mailbox if not already enabled. At that point you can start manually moving messages to the archive or wait for the MFA to kick in.

1 Vote 1 ·

Thanks a million @michev ! really appreciate your help!

It seems like the bug/known issue you mentioned was actually the issue. My shared-mailbox wasn't assigned a license but it still showed a capacity of 100GB.
I'm not sure whether it used the 100GB for real as it showed 99% used.

But when I tried to enable in-place archive, the mailbox turned into one with a capacity of 50GB (in-place archive was working in the background) but the mailbox full/delivery failed message came when a email was sent to the shared mailbox.

I'm going to assign an Exchange online plan 2 for this and see
Hopefully it sorts things out

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