Cannot Delete or Move Messages in Outlook

[ToyodaTim]

This problem is about to drive me nuts. I really hope someone can give me a hand with this before I lose it, or have to pay Microsoft their ridiculous support fee in order to get it fixed...

Anyway, here's my situation:

We have a user who cannot move or delete messages in Outlook. Whenever he tries to do so, he gets an error message stating "The item could not be deleted. It was either moved or already deleted, or access was denied." This started about a month ago for no apparent reason.

Since then, I have run isinteg on the mailbox store in Exchange and I also ran a defrag using eseutil /d on the store. None of this has fixed the problem.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why this user is still getting this error message? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

-Tim N.

 

[mass2612]

What happens if you hold the shift key and then press delete on the keyboard to delete an item?

If this works then check the mailbox properties through the ADU&C console and see if the mailbox has a limit setup on it. If it does then use System manager and see what the mailbox size is currently. You will probably find that the mailbox is over the maximum threshold.

You will get this error when trying to delete items when you are over the maximum limit as when you delete an item normally it increases the mailbox as it copies the e-mail to the deleted items. When you press delete whilst holding shift you work around this setting. If you increase the limit on the mailbox temporarily you will be able to clear it all out normally.

 

[ToyodaTim]

I checked to see if the user had mailbox limits set, and he doesn't. Just to be sure, I changed the user specific settings for mailbox limits to give him wide-open access. It still doesn't work.

When I hold down Shift and hit the delete key, the email deletes without any error message.

One way to work around this that I found is to export his mailbox to a PST file, then delete his mailbox, recreate a new mailbox for him, and import his mailbox from the PST. I am holding off to use this method for fixing it to see if anyone else has any ideas on what caused this problem and how to fix it.

-Tim

 

[ToyodaTim]

OK, I figured out the problem, so FYI-

The problem wasn't related to Exchange at all. This user's Personal Folders file reached it's limit. Apparently, PST's have a limit of approximately 2 GB. This user's PST file was 1.82 GB. I don't know why Microsoft just didn't make the error message I was getting related to this problem.

So, looks like I'll just have to create the user a new PST.

-Tim

 

[sigmab]

There is a program called Pstsplitter that actually splits the PST in to smaller pst's based on years. We use it at my work place and i works great but I'm not sure where to get it for purchase etc. Something to look into though it's real handy.