October 5, 2012 Has your Exchange-based Outlook mail client performance gotten slower over time? For example, is Outlook Search getting slower? Or do you often get a message saying something like “Requesting data from Microsoft Exchange Server” that is slow to clear before you see your mail update? If so, you may have a problem that most people are not aware of: you may have reached Exchange’s single-folder item count limit. The good news is, if you have exceeded that limit, it can be fixed fairly easily as I discuss below, and your speed should come back.
What is this Limit? Exchange’s single-folder item count limit is different from Exchange’s mailbox storage limit. You might still have lots of space, but if you have too many e-mail items in one folder, the slow-down will occur.
That’s because it’s based only on item count, not size, and that count is not that hard to reach well before you run out of mailbox storage space. The fix is simple: spread your mail across more folders or subfolders; or archive or delete your mail off the server. More on how to do that smartly, below. Note this is a problem only on older Exchange servers—Microsoft has mostly fixed this on the newest ones. But also note that even though you may have a newer version of Outlook, the Exchange Server version your company runs behind your Outlook is invisible to you, and it could be quite old and so still subject to this issue. Many IT departments are slow to upgrade their server software, so check with your IT department to confirm the version (more on which versions are effected below). Before I explain more details on how this limit works, how to identify it, and specific strategies to fix it, let me first give you some background on why 1MTD or MYN users should be particularly aware of this.
Why 1MTD and MYN Users Should Know This As you may know, my primary recommendation in for filing mail is to file all saved Outlook e-mail into one folder called the Processed Mail folder. Nearly all my books and classes discuss the huge benefits of doing this, so I won’t repeat the reasons here (for more online information about how I use the Processed Mail folder, see this ). But obviously that single-folder filing approach could make you more prone to reaching the Exchange single-folder item count limit (again, if using an old Exchange server); any one folder loaded with lots of items, like the Processed Mail folder, can cause the problem. It’s a bit ironic that a filing best-practice that will make you more productive could lead to a technical server issue. And even if you are not using the Processed Mail folder approach, but perhaps you are storing lots of old mail in your Inbox, then you could still be impacted by this issue; the Inbox is subject to the same limits. What are the Limits?
How Old a Server? Are you likely to hit this?
Note Outlook for Mac 2011 does not hang when you're working offline or when no accounts are added. This issue occurs only when Outlook tries to sync an account with the server. This issue occurs only when Outlook tries to sync an account with the server. I had similar issue with a unread email count of more than 4 billions. When looking the counter it shows the 4 billion unread message and when looking into the footer I notice it is negative. I tried all the other answers solution and even finding a way to disable caching, the counter was 0 but when I re-enabled it the counter came back to 4.
How many items are too many for a single folder? Microsoft has an on this and it states the limit is directly determined by the version of your Exchange Server. According to that article, if you have Exchange Server 2003 or 2000, the limit will be somewhere around 2,500 to 5,000 items in one folder. That’s not a lot of mail and so that number will be easy to reach if your company is using those older versions of Exchange and you are filing a lot of mail in one folder. Newer servers are better. Links at the bottom of the article I referenced above lead to other articles that state their limits.
Apparently Exchange Server 2007 has a single-folder count limit of around 20,000 items; and Exchange Server 2010 has a limit of around 100,000 items. That means Exchange Server 2010 has pretty much eliminated the problem since most users will probably hit their mailbox storage size limit well before reaching 100,000 items in one folder. Again, you have to contact your IT department to find out your Exchange version. Unfortunately it’s not displayed in the Outlook client and it’s not the same as your Outlook version number. How do you Know You Are Over?
What happens when you reach the item limit—how do you know you are exceeding it? Well, unlike when you hit your space limit, you won’t get a warning dialog box and you won’t be prevented from sending mail if you go well over it. Rather, performance of Outlook just starts to degrade—in other words Outlook gets slower, particularly when searching or sorting mail. The indexes behind the list views in Outlook just get overtaxed and start to slow down.
That Microsoft article also says that you may see the following messages appear as Outlook seems to take longer and longer to respond: “Requesting data from Microsoft Exchange Server” or “Outlook is retrieving data from the Microsoft Exchange Server” If you suspect you are having this issue, note that you can see the item count for your currently active folder by looking in the lower left-hand corner of the Outlook window; checking that and comparing to the numbers above will help you determine if you are over the limit. 1MTD or MYN Strategies to Fix it If you are a 1MTD or MYN user, and have confirmed you have this issue, then it’s time to decrease the number of items in your Processed Mail folder. Well, you can 1) delete or archive old mail off the server from that folder, or 2) you can spread the mail across one or more additional Processed Mail folders still on the server. Which to do depends on how large your Exchange storage limit is. If you have a generous Exchange storage allocation, you can probably do number 2 and spread your mail across multiple Processed Mail folders on the server (just alter the names to indicate the date range). By putting them on the server you get the benefits of mobile access and corporate backup.
But if your mailbox storage size limit is tight relative to the count limit, then you probably want to do number 1, and delete items or use off-server archiving. On Windows you’d probably use a Personal Folders (PST file) approach to archive mail; see Appendix A and B of my Outlook book for strategies for archiving mail into local folders. Or, if available, start using the new feature that some companies are slowly starting to roll out with their Exchange 2010; that will solve the issue too. Fine Tuning after a Processed Mail Folder Fix After adjusting your Processed Mail folder, don’t forget to also check your Sent Items folder count, as it can build up easily. You may need to archive or split it up as well. Also, there can be tighter limits for the Contacts and Calendar folders that could have similar effects. In the articles above Microsoft states that to maintain performance on Exchange 2007, you want to keep Contacts and Calendar folders under 5000 items each, and that for Exchange 2010 the limit for each is 10,000 items.
Apparently in Exchange 2003, those folders have the same limits as the mail folders (2500 to 5000 items). After you make the fixes above, keep in mind that Outlook Instant Search can be configured to search all your folders by default; so if you do transition to multiple Processed Mail folders, you will probably want to make that search setting. See the end of chapter 5 in my Outlook book for a discussion of how to make settings like that. Also, if you have multiple Processed Mail folders on the Exchange server, you may want to start using my All Mail Search Folder that I discuss in so that you can view and scroll through mail on multiple folders as if they were in one folder. There are lots of other benefits of using the All Mail Search Folder, so take a look at that article. Wrap Up That’s it; that’s the problem and solution.
Luckily the problem is unlikely to occur on the newest versions of Exchange, and so there is a good chance it will be less common as time passes and servers are upgraded. But if you are having slow Outlook performance now, this could be why. Could this also cause my Outlook to crash?
I use Microsoft Exchange across 3 devices (so I can sync everything) and the other day Outlook started crashing on 2 of them (& on the third, my phone, it simply limits the number of e-mails I can receive/see). I have a feeling that there is a LOT of mail on my server – mail that I’ve deleted but that still sits there until I don’t know when. And I have no idea how to change those settings. I’m fairly certain there is a lot of mail buildup since I am currently able to work in web Outlook and I noticed a lot of ‘new’ mail there that I deleted at least a couple of weeks ago (but probably more).
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The majority of my Exchange users are all on Windows 7 and have no issues (at least using Outlook.) but a subset of the executives are ardent Mac users running Outlook 2011 for OS X. One of these clients is prompted every 5-10 minutes for credentials. Ticking the checkbox to remember credentials does not fix the situation. Mac version is 10.7.2. I have already removed and rebuilt the EWS virtual directory on my Client Access server. Outlook anywhere is set to NTLM authentication.
None of the Microsoft clients are experiencing this issue. What else can I do to make this issue go away? There may be something off in the way the user's password is being stored in their keychain. Run the Keychain Access utility (from the user's account).
If the keychain list isn't shown in the sidebar, choose View menu Show Keychains. Select the 'login' keychain in the sidebar, then run some checks:. Open Keychain First Aid (under the Keychain Access menu), enter the user's account password, select Repair, and click Start. If it finds (& repairs) any problems, check to see if that's solved the problem.
With the login keychain still selected, choose Edit menu Change Settings for Keychain 'login'. In the settings dialog, check the autolock settings for the keychain; if it's set to lock after, say, 5 minutes, and Outlook checks for incoming messages every 10 minutes, the keychain will lock between each check. Generally, you want its autolock time to be longer than the email checkin time. (Note: if Outlook caches the password rather than rechecking the password each time, this will not be an issue; I haven't used it, so I don't know.). If neither of those does the trick, try deleting the relevant keychain entry (/entries), and having Outlook recreate them (with the remember credentials option). Note that starting in OS X 10.9, there's a second user keychain (called either Local Items or iCloud), and you may need to delete entries both there & in the login keychain. It's possible there's something wrong with the entry, or its access policy, or there are multiple conflicting entries; deleting & recreating the entry is generally the simplest way to fix this.
I had problem with Outlook for Mac - a box kept appearing saying 'Authentication Failed - Invalid Credentials' and asking if I wanted to try entering password. If 'No' was clicked or if my password was entered, the message would just appear again after a few seconds. Whilst this message was on the screen I could not open Outlook on my MacBook. Solved the problem by clicking Outlook during the few seconds after I had clicked 'No' when the message was off the screen. Then clicked Preferences, then Accounts. The password box was empty so I filled it in and the fault message never appeared again and I could open Outlook.
Problem solved! Beware that all the operations had to be performed very quickly between clicking 'No' which removed the message box for about 5 seconds, before it re-appeared again! I work remotely 99% of the time and never had this problem until I came into the corporate office and hopped on their internal WiFi.
That's when the problems started for me. Anyone else notice in the keychain a number of old Exchange password entries? Could that have something to do with it? I decided to purge my system of 7 old entries, leaving only the most recent entry. Keeping my fingers crossed that fixes the problem. I've tried all other suggestions I could find but no success with any of them.