Big mailboxes?
sees...@gmail.com
Would having entourage using exchange server cause sporadic connection
problems for users? Some of our users with mailboxes in the .5GB to
8GB range are unable to receive emails for hours at a time but it's
very sporadic. Email will work fine for 3-7 days and then suddenly
for 3+ hours nothing. I talked to our exchange host and they say it's
because we have too many mail messages. They said we need to make
each folder have less than 2000 messages. Do you think any of this is
related to our sporadic connection problems? I have my doubts.
Michel Bintener
I can't say anything of an authoritative nature regarding this issue as I
don't use Exchange, but I can tell you that similar problems have been
discussed a couple of times in this newsgroup, and the conclusion has always
been that too many mail messages in an Exchange folder can definitely cause
Entourage to slow down, and quite considerably so. I'm not sure if the
connection problems can be explained this way, but it could very well be
related to the huge folders, or it could even be caused by them.
On 13/11/2007 23:56, in article
1194994587....@v65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com, "sees...@gmail.com"
<sees...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)
*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***
William Smith
I recently provided the following advice to someone in private mail and
just today he says his problem is resolved. Maybe it will help you too:
1. What address are you using for your Exchange Server? It should be a
back-end address of an Exchange Server. I don't recommend using your
Outlook Web Access (OWA) address because that often means you're going
through your proxy server to the Internet and coming back into your
network to get to your mail. Firewalls and virus scanners can get into
the mix.
2. How big is your message store? Like Outlook, in Entourage you can
right-click your account in the folder list and select Folder Properties
--> Storage.
Pay particular attention to the size of your Inbox because this is kept
in sync more often than non-Inbox messages and folders. If you have any
sub-folders in your Inbox then move them out to a different set of
folders at the same level as your Inbox.
3. Where is your Exchange Server on your network in relation to the
Entourage client? Are they separated by fairly fast links or slow links?
For our graphics users in New York City who access a shared mailbox on
our Exchange Servers in St. Paul across a <T1 I have them put Entourage
into Headers Only mode. In Entourage, go to Tools --> Accounts -->
<Exchange account> --> Options and set "Partially receive messages over"
to "9999 KB always". It sounds counter-intuitive but this is how you do
it. You'll notice that the account name displayed in your folder list
will show (Headers Only).
4. Make sure that Spotlight preferences and any antivirus software such
as Symantec Antivirus are excluding the "~/Documents/Microsoft User
Data" folder from their scanning. Spotlight preferences are in the
System Preferences and SAV preferences should be there as well. If you
don't have SAV appearing in your System Preferences then download this
from Symantec
<http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/num.nsf/docid/2005083110442611?OpenDoc
ument&seg=en&lg=en&ct=us>.
That's my bag of tricks. I'm supporting a few hundred Macs with
Entourage across many WAN links and my users are not reporting any major
issues including one guy with a multi-GB message store.
Hope this helps!
--
bill
William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>