You can configure the Mailbox Cleanup Agent to move messages based on age limits. Within each recipient container in a site, age limits can be set on the user's Inbox, Sent Items folder, Deleted Items folder, and all other folders as a group. Outdated messages can be moved to the Deleted Items folder or to a special private folder so users can process the messages at their own discretion. After the Mailbox Cleanup Agent has cleaned out a mailbox, it sends a message to the user describing the cleanup operations that were performed. The tool also logs information for administrators to the Windows NT Server Event Log.
To enforce when deleted items are permanently deleted, the tool can be set to delete items from the Deleted Items folder. To allow your users to control which messages are deleted, you can configure the Mailbox Cleanup Agent to move messages to the System Cleanup folder. If the System Cleanup folder doesn't already exist when cleanup is run, the Mailbox Cleanup Agent creates it. The System Cleanup folder is a private folder in the user's mailbox that can remind users to delete outdated messages. It does not actually delete the messages; users can keep messages moved to the System Cleanup folder by dragging and dropping them into a personal folder file (.pst file).
The System Cleanup folder contains subfolders for each folder that is cleaned. For example, if you configure the Mailbox Cleanup Agent to move messages in Sue's mailbox to the System Cleanup folder, the folder hierarchy might look as follows:
Inbox
Sent Items
Sue's Folder
System Cleanup folder
Inbox
Sent Items
Sue's Folder
In the Administrator window, choose Recipients.
Double-click the mailbox agent for the Mailbox Cleanup Agent.
Select the Containers tab.
In the left side of the Containers property page, select the container for the mailboxes you want to clean. The settings for the selected container are displayed on the right side of the property page.
Specify the age limits on folders and where outdated messages will be moved.
Option | Description | |
Use parent's configuration | The selected container is cleaned using the same settings as the parent container. This option is available on child containers only. It is enabled by default. When this option is selected, other options in the property page are disabled, except for Exclude mailboxes. | |
Folder | The folders containing the messages you want to move or delete. You can set age limits for messages in the Inbox, the Sent Items folder, and all other folders as a group. | |
Age limit (days) | The limit on how old messages can be before they are moved during the scheduled operation of the Mailbox Cleanup Agent. | |
Move to folder | Qualifying messages are moved to either the Deleted Items folder or the System Cleanup folder. | |
Permanently delete items in the Deleted Items folder older than (days) | The limit on how old messages in the Deleted Items folder can be before they are permanently deleted during the scheduled operation of the Mailbox Cleanup Agent. If an age limit is not specified, deletion depends on the user's default configuration. If a number of days is specified, messages are permanently deleted if their receive date is older than date the tool is run minus the specified number of days. If you want to postpone deletion of messages that are moved during the same session, set the age limit to a number greater than the age limit for the other folders. | |
Max number of items to move per mailbox | The number of messages that are moved before the Mailbox Cleanup Agent stops cleaning one mailbox and begins processing another. Deleted items are deleted only after those in all other folders have been processed. So, if the limit of items processed in other folders is reached before those in the Deleted Items folder are processed, then the items in the Deleted Items folder are not deleted. The default is 50. | |
Exclude mailboxes | Excludes specified mailboxes in the container from the cleanup session. | |
You can set up the Mailbox Cleanup Agent to run unattended on many mailboxes throughout a site according to the schedule you specify.
In the Administrator window, choose Recipients.
Double-click the mailbox agent for the Mailbox Cleanup Agent.
Select the Schedule tab.
Specify the cleanup frequency to daily, weekly, or monthly.