Microsoft Outlook folder size

[Callahan]

I have an issue with one of my users in that the Inbox is reporting back that the folder and all it's subfolders come to 158,500KB (approx). If I add up the totals of each of the sub folders they come nowhere near to the total for all folders that is being reported. As the mailbox is being hosted offsite there is no way I can do any admin from the backend.
I seem to remember way back when I used Outlook 97 that there was a way to hide messages in your Inbox (albeit accidently) and I am wondering if this is what's happened here.
Can anyone tell me if it is still possible to hide messages or if they have any ideas as to what is causing the problem.

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[smah]

I think what you're referring to is View, Current View, Show all messages.

Right click on Outlook Today and select Properties. Use the folder size button to see all the totals. Then if needed, try the compact now function in the Advanced dialog.

 

[Callahan]

Hi Smah,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I know how to to tell the folder size, that's how I was able to tell you the folder size in my original post! You can only compress a .pst file though which would require the e-mail to be sync'd to a local .pst file which you could then compress. This user is connecting to a hosted solution.
Does anyone know if there is any way an Exchange Server can misrepresent the actual size of a user's mailbox?

 

[smah]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding or not explaining myself well. The method that I posted will show the sizes of the Outlook data store. These should be the correct numbers. Where are you finding a second set of sizes that disagrees with this?