Outlook for Mac keeps crashing with large mailbox

Question

I have a user that just bought a brand new MacBook Air and put Office for Mac on it. He's trying to connect to our Exchange server where he has a ~17.5 GB mailbox. The inbox starts downloading, gets to 699 items with 199 unread and Outlook crashes. Does Outlook for Mac just not like huge mailboxes?

Also, are .ost files stored on the Mac like they are in Windows?

Solution 1

There is a limit of attachment size (10MB) with Outlook 2011 on Mac. You might be hitting that by the looks of your problem. It's entirely possible to change this setting on an Exchange server, even 2007.

Solution 2

After years of rebuilding Outlook/Mac databases, I can tell you unequivocally that Outlook Mac WILL crash/corrupt the database once email numbers in the InBox, Deleted and Sent Items (or any one of those particular boxes reaches into the low thousands. DO yourself a favor and proactively prune the mailboxes of execs FOR THEM if you must. Much easier than some of the corrupted database/mail loss nightmares I've endured...

Comments

[Linker3000]

"~17.5 GB mailbox" Thats not good! Here's what Microsoft says about 'large mailboxes' on Exchange 2007: "The phrase large mailbox can mean different things to different people. In this white paper, large mailboxes are defined as being larger than 1 gigabyte (GB) in total size. "

[Moab]

People who refuse to archive email have these problems in exchange or Outlook, I see it all the time, no reason to have 17+ gig in one OST file.

[Keltari]

17.5 GB?!?! Holy crap! When will people learn email is not file storage. Get a product like symantec.com/business/enterprise-vault to relieve yourself of this problem.