Easier way to clean up mailbox?

[CLand]

We are a small 55-person firm that has a total Exchange server size of 10GB.
I have users who want/need to keep large CAD drawings and files in their
mailbox and do not want to archive them. They do not want to have to go
through the extra steps to open the archive and find what they need. The
President of the company literally has over 200 folders in his mailbox and
keeps EVERYTHING! He refuses to clean out his mailbox and every time he
reaches his 500MB limit, he complains about having to archive and the amount
of time that it takes.

Has anyone else run into user problems like this and is there a solution for
it? Do I just let them have as much space as they need (some would run the
mailbox size up to 2GB if I let them). Obviously, one problem is that
management doesn't understand the issue (as hard as I've tried to explain
it), but is there something I can do until I can get the message across?
Right now everyone is unhappy (IT and management).

I know basic Exchange/Outlook, so I am looking for something that I may be
missing - any help, comments, or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

 

[K. Orland]

You could add a PST to their profile and have them move large files there.
The size of the PST depends on the version of Outlook. For example, Outlook
2002 and earlier has a max PST size of 2 GB though Outlook can and often will
become flakey and even corrupt by about 1.5 GB or so. You can of course work
around this by creating multiple PST's. Later versions of Outlook allow for
much larger PST's.

The downside to this is that the PST must be kept on the local machine and
so mail moved to it is not part of the Information Store and backed up. If
users have a CD burner, they can back up their PST to CD which is NOT time
consuming. Since your company is small, you can even do this for them.

It is not recommended that the PST be kept on a networked drive and used
from that location. Outlook requires constant read/write access and so any
interruption in connectivity can wreak havoc. However, if you have enough
disk space a copy can be saved to a user's home directory to be kept as a
backup.

I'm also sure that others will come along with excellent suggestions for you
to consider. Good luck!