Increase Microsoft Office 365 Mailbox Size- In Few Steps

Summary: This article covers all the details required to increase Office 365 Mailbox Size. Includes Office 365 plans with storage quota, and different types of mailboxes in Outlook. After that, a section on how to view mailbox limits and available storage, then methods to increase mailbox size. This article also covers the issues when the storage limit exceeds and the precautions to prevent them.

Office 365 offers a powerful platform for email hosting i.e., Outlook. However, it’s essential to manage and store all your emails in an Office 365 mailbox for smooth communication.

While daily storing your emails in the Office 365 mailbox, one day your mailbox reaches its limit and then you start getting warnings. To resolve this problem many users start deleting unnecessary emails from mailboxes but this is not an efficient solution. One solution could be to increase the Office 365 mailbox size but the problem is “HOW”. Read the whole blog to get every detail for increasing the mailbox size.

Understand Different types of Mailboxes in Office 365

Microsoft designed its Office 365 Outlook in such a way that users can store emails in different types of mailboxes under a single account.? However there is a constraint that you cannot combine the storage of different mailboxes into one, only you can migrate emails from one mailbox to other mailboxes.

• User Mailboxes: It is a standard mailbox, assigned to individual users to access and manage their emails, calendars, contacts, and tasks.
• Shared Mailboxes: In this multiple users can send, receive, and access the email under a centralized email account. Only those users who can access this mailbox have permission from an admin.
• Archive Mailboxes: It manages mailbox size by storing older messages of the user mailbox.
• Resource Mailboxes: They store resources like meeting rooms, projectors, or equipment. For example conference room calendars or equipment reservations.
• Public Folder: It allows shared storage for documents, emails, and other items and is accessible by all users within an organization.

Office 365 Plans with Storage Limit

Once you understand the different types of mailboxes in Office 365 Outlook, now check their storage quota available in different plans.

How to View Office 365 Mailbox Limit & Available Storage

You can check the available space and used space of your mailbox in Office 365 Outlook. If you are an admin, then you can check the storage of all the user's mailboxes in the Exchange admin center. Check out the Steps.

View Office 365 Outlook Mailbox Storage for Individual

1. Open Outlook on a web browser and sign in with your Office 365 account.
2. A web interface opens, click on the settings icon on the top right corner.
3. A pane opens, click View all Outlook settings (highlighted in blue).
4. In the Settings window, go to General > Storage.

View Office 365 Outlook Mailbox Storage as an Admin

1. Open the Exchange admin center in a web browser & log in with the admin credentials.
2. Go to Recipients > Mailboxes. A list of all user's mailboxes is displayed.
3. Tick the checkbox beside the username a pane appears on the right side.?
4. At the bottom, you’ll find the mailbox storage data.

Methods to Increase Office 365 Outlook Mailbox Size

There are different methods to increase the Office 365 Outlook mailbox size, but in this article, we see the best 4 methods to increase the mailbox size.? These methods are reliable, efficient, and easy to implement.

Method 1. Increase Office 365 Mailbox Size Using PowerShell

To use this method, you must have admin credentials or admin permission to manage Outlook mailboxes. Then you have to connect Office 365 with Windows PowerShell, after that use the below commands in the PowerShell cmdlet.

Set-Mailbox <UserID> -ProhibitSendQuota <Value> -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota <Value> -IssueWarningQuota <Value>

In the ‘USERID’ column fill the user mailbox email address, and in the ‘Value’ block fill the size in GB, MB, or KB.

Get-Mailbox <UserID> | Select *quota

From the above command, you can increase the mailbox size for an individual. If you want to increase the size for multiple mailboxes then check the below commands.??

Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -ProhibitSendQuota < Value > -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota < Value > -IssueWarningQuota < Value >

If you want to increase the size of the mailbox for a particular team or department, then run the below command. It is the same as the above command but it has filters to increase mailbox size for a specific group of people.

Get-User | where {$_. Department -eq “Sales”} | Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -ProhibitSendQuota <Value> -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota <Value> -IssueWarningQuota <Value>

Method 2. Enable In-place Archive

Enable in-place archive in Office 365 allows you to get extra storage up to 50 GB/ 100 GB depending on the plan. You can store old emails in an in-place archive mailbox without deleting them, it will free up the space from the primary mailbox. Let's check out the steps to enable an in-place archive mailbox.

1. Login to Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
2. In the left side pane, tap on Recipients > Mailboxes.
3. Select a user then tap on Username for more details and choose Others.
4. Click on the Manage Mailbox Archive option.
5. Enable the mailbox archive, put in the archive folder name, and click on Save.

Method 3. Change Subscription Plan

One of the easiest ways to increase Office 365 mailbox size is that upgrade to the higher subscription plan of Office 365. But in this method, you have to invest some money, let’s see the steps to upgrade to a new Office 365 plan.

1. Go to Microsoft Admin Center. And expand the Billing option.
2. Select the Purchase Services option and under the category section select Microsoft 365.
3. Choose the higher plan from the list of all the plans and tap on Details.
4. Select the license quantity, click on the Buy option, and finish the transaction.

Method 4: Export the Mailbox to a Local System?

This method does not increase Office 365 Outlook mailbox size. Instead allows you to export emails from the cloud to the local system and free up the space from the Office 365 mailbox. You can export the old files or files that are no longer needed on a cloud server to a local system and then delete them permanently from Office 365 mailbox.

Many experts recommend using Automated Office 365 Export Mailbox Software. It is one of the most reliable and easy-to-use export tools.

Issues Encountered When Storage Limit Exceeds

1. When a user’s mailbox reaches its storage limit, it may no longer be able to receive new emails. Senders might receive bounce-back messages indicating that the recipient’s mailbox is full.
2. Users may be unable to send new emails if their mailbox is full. This can disrupt communication and delay important correspondence, to avoid that so, we have to increase the Microsoft 365 mailbox size.
3. Automatic email forwarding rules may stop working if the mailbox is full, preventing users from redirecting emails to other accounts or distribution lists.
4. Users may be unable to receive or send emails with attachments if the mailbox has reached its size limit, affecting file-sharing capabilities.
5. Users might experience delays or errors when accessing their emails or performing searches within their mailbox due to performance degradation.
6. Organizations subject to legal or regulatory compliance requirements may face risks if emails are not properly stored or archived due to full mailbox issues.

Precautions While Increasing Office 365 Mailbox Size

It is recommended to check the Methods to Increase Office 365 Outlook Mailbox Size section first then read this section. There are different methods to increase the mailbox size but to use these methods they are some risk of data loss. So, it is highly recommended to take precautions before using any method to increase the mailbox size.

1. Before performing any method that is mentioned above, it is advised to back up Office 365 data.?
2. Before increasing the mailbox size, check your Office 365 plan, available storage, and used storage.
3. While performing this task, check the network connectivity (connection should be stable.) Otherwise, you might lose important data.

Conclusion

Managing your Office 365 mailbox size well is crucial for keeping communication smooth and efficient in any organization. As your business grows and you receive more emails, you might need more money to store. However, there are practical ways to deal with this. By implementing these ways, you can enhance your email system’s performance & efficiently increase Microsoft 365 mailbox size in a few minutes.