Maximum MBOX file size limits and attachments

[theocmg]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Email Client: Exchange I am paring down a huge identity (16GB) by creating saved searches (6-month groups) of an offline copy of an exchange identity and pulling them to the desktop as MBOX files. One has 2314 items, another 14,521 and yet another has 18,845. Curiously they are all about 2GB in file size. Is this a limit? What happens when I exceed it? Are attachments stripped to preserve the messages? Thanks!

 

[Diane Ross]

I am paring down a huge identity (16GB) by creating saved searches
(6-month groups) of an offline copy of an exchange identity and pulling
them to the desktop as MBOX files. One has 2314 items, another 14,521
and yet another has 18,845. Curiously they are all about 2GB in file
size. Is this a limit? What happens when I exceed it? Are attachments
stripped to preserve the messages? Thanks!

There is no stated limit, but I've found that folders over 2GB in size
can fail. It's not the number of items, but the size. Attachments are
not stripped.

I'm not sure if this script works on Exchange accounts or not, but it's
a big time saver.

Export folders as MBOX files (includes subfolders)
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/downloads/scripts/jolly/Make_MBOX.zip>

When exporting as MBOX, it's hard to know when the export has completed.
You can monitor by opening the Activity Monitor and watching the
Microsoft Database daemon. When it's at zero CPU, the script has
finished. This is not an indication that it completely exported all
data. You would need to compare number of messages by importing the MBOX
file.

 

[theocmg]

Thanks Diane. I figured out that piece about the lack of progress. Data Written/Sec drops to zero too. I'll check out your script, thank-you.

So you just have to try an import to see if you got them all? Sorry to be dense about this.

 

[Diane Ross]

So you just have to try an import to see if you got them all? Sorry to
be dense about this.

If you are exporting all folders and it stops on a folder, you know that
folder has a problem, but if you are doing an individual folder all you
know is it exported some messages. The only way to know is import the
file and check the number of messages.

Exporting as .rge will give you an error if there is a problem.

This article explains the differences in .rge and .mbox files.
<http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2009/02/backup_individual_items.html>