Outlook email issues related to mail folder management.

The mail issue we see is placing folders inside of the user's Inbox.

The wrong way with folders under the inbox The right way with folders equal to the inbox.

The simple way to resolve this is drag the folders from inside your inbox up to your Name and they will move to the same root level. If there are Rules setup for these folder they will automatically adjust.

Below is Microsoft's Knowledgebase article regarding this issue.

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Microsoft Office Outlook users experience poor performance when they work with a folder that contains many items on a server that is running Microsoft Exchange Server. Additionally, Outlook users may receive one of the following messages:

Requesting data from Microsoft Exchange Server

Outlook is retrieving data from the Microsoft Exchange Server ExchangeServerName

Note An item is defined as an email message or a folder.

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This issue occurs when an Outlook user works with items in a folder that contains many items. Outlook must perform several operations against the Exchange server to retrieve the contents of a folder. Therefore, when there are many items in a folder, additional processing is required to respond to the Outlook requests.

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You can help avoid poor performance in Outlook by carefully managing the number of items in folders, especially the Outlook folders that are heavily used. These folders include Inbox, Calendar, Tasks, Sent Items, and Deleted Items, with special emphasis on Inbox, Sent Items, and Deleted Items, because these are the first to be downloaded. This will also pertain to any other folders that are heavily used.

The recommended number of items in a folder depends on several factors. These factors include the client’s proximity to the server, the storage infrastructure, the load on the hard disks (client and server), the number of users, and the number of restricted views.

We recommend that you maintain a range of 2,500 to 5,000 items in a folder, depending on the capacity of the Exchange Server environment. Additionally, you can create more top-level folders or create subfolders under Inbox, Sent Items, and Deleted Items. When you do this, the costs that are associated with index creation are greatly reduced, if the number of items in any one folder does not exceed 5,000.

The following list includes ways that you can help manage the number of items in folders:

  • Use folder hierarchies to help keep the number of items in a folder to the recommended values. (We recommend that you use no more than three levels of folders. For example, the Inbox is the top level. Then you have a subfolder labeled "2010" for all email messages that were received in 2010. And then you have a subfolder inside of the 2010 folder named "January" for the January email messages. This folder named January is the third level.)
  • Use mailbox manager policies.
  • Use client-based archiving solutions.
  • Use server-based archiving solutions.
  • Use mailbox size limits.