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How to Increase Mailbox Size in Office 365 – Simple Steps Explained

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Published By Aldrich Calvin
Anuraag Singh
Approved By Anuraag Singh
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Published On June 19th, 2024
If we talk about mailboxes in general, it is important part of sending and receiving emails. When you mailbox runs out of storage inevitably, you can miss out on important emails which may lead to loss. Hence, this article is beneficial to you if you want to learn how to increase mailbox size in Office 365. Additionally, there are various ways mentioned in this article with which you can easily resolve this issue. 

Office 365 offers various subscription plans that consist of different storage spaces. Users can choose what plan is suitable for them based on their requirements either for their personal use or for their organisation. Over time, if the usage of the mailbox increases, the storage chosen by them will no longer be sufficient and users will need to upgrade their storage plan or find different ways in which they can solve this issue. In this article, we have discussed the steps on how to increase mailbox size in Office 365. 

Before we begin, you must be aware of the storage options offered in Microsoft Office 365. 

The Different Storage Options Offered in Microsoft Office 365

The storage space of Office 365 depends on two factors. These are: 

  • The type of mailbox.
  • Subscription plan purchased by the user. 

Organisations purchase storage plans based on their requirements, but there may come a situation where they need more storage space as bulk emails with attachments start taking up space. 

Generally, the storage space offered by default by Microsoft is 50 GB. The top subscription plan offers 100GB of space. Let us review the different subscription plans along with the storage they offer in detail: 

Feature Business Basic Business Standard  Microsoft 365 Enterprise E1 Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3/E5 Office 365 Enterprise F3 Office 365 Enterprise E3/E5
Group Mailbox 50GB 50GB 50GB 50GB 50GB 50GB
Public Folder 100GB 100GB 100GB 100GB 100GB 100GB
Resource Mailbox 50GB 50GB 50GB 50GB 50GB 50GB
Shared Mailbox 50GB 50GB 50GB 50GB/100GB 50GB 50GB/100GB
Archive Mailbox 50GB 1.5TB 50GB 1.5TB Not Available 1.5TB
User Mailbox 50GB 50GB 50GB 100GB 2GB 100GB

Size Limit After Upgrading Mailboxes in Office 365

If you opt for the Microsoft Enterprise E3 or E5 plan, then the mailbox’s size can be increased to 100GB of storage. A point to note is that the Office 365 F3 license does not come with an Archive mailbox and has only 2GB of storage for the User mailbox. 

Every subscription has a public folder with a 100GB storage limit. The shared mailbox comes with 50GB of storage as standard and does not require any license, but if a plan is assigned to it, then it will have a 100GB limit. 

You can further extend your storage space by archiving some of your emails in the archive mailbox which has a storage limit of 50GB as standard. You can get unlimited storage for the archive mailbox by opting for Exchange Online plan 1 or 2 along with the Exchange Online Archiving add-on.

Note: After 1st November 2021, there has been a limit on auto-expanding of the Archive Mailbox. The maximum size you can get is 1.5TB of storage at the rate of 1GB increasing per day. 
Also read: How To Configure an Out-of-Office Notification – A Detailed Guide

What are the Steps to Check Your Office 365 Mailbox Size?

If you use an Office 365 mailbox, you should be aware of the mailbox size you have so that you can increase it according to your requirements.

There are two ways in which you can check the size of your mailbox: 

  • Outlook Online.
  • Exchange Admin Centre. 

To check the mailbox size using Outlook Online, you can follow the steps given below: 

  1. Open the Outlook website on your computer. 
  2. Login and then validate your Microsoft ID credentials. 
  3. Click on the Settings option at the top
  4. Select the General option and then click on the Storage option. 

Here, you can check the mailbox size that you have and the current space left in it. If the space you are left with is low, then you need to know the steps on how to increase mailbox size in Office 365. 

To check the mailbox size using the Exchange admin centre, you can follow the steps given below: 

  1. Open the Exchange admin centre in the browser. 
  2. Login and then validate your Exchange admin centre ID credentials. 
  3. Go to the Recipient option and select Mailboxes. 
  4. The list of all the mailboxes used in your organisation appears. 
  5. Click on the account that you want to get the details of. A pop-up window will appear showing all the information you need. 

How to Increase Mailbox Size in Office 365?

There may be various reasons as to why organisations need to increase their storage space. The different ways in which you can increase the mailbox size are: 

  1. Deleting Unused Data.
  2. Upgrading to a Different Plan.
  3. Configuring the Archive Mailbox.
  4. Using the Retention Policy.
  5. Setting Up PowerShell.

Let us discuss these ways in detail: 

  • Deleting Unused Data.

This is one of the easiest ways to not increase the cost of the organisation’s functioning as well as making up storage space. You just need time to filter through the data that you don’t need anymore, and you can delete these files and data to make up space. This will help you greatly in cleaning up and managing your mailbox. To maintain your mailbox using this method, you would have to perform this regularly. 

  • Upgrading to a Different Plan.

One of the easiest way methods, if you are running out of space, is to upgrade to a different plan that suits you or your organisation’s needs. Buying a plan that offers greater storage space such as E3 or E5 can increase your storage space. However, it will include the added cost of purchasing a new plan. 

  • Configuring the Archive Mailbox

A very effective way to increase the storage space of your mailbox is to enable the Archive Mailbox. You can shift all your rarely used emails into the Archive Mailbox from your Primary Mailbox and this will help you free up space. 

In order to enable your Archive Mailbox, you must have an Exchange Online plan 1 or 2 along with an Exchange Online Archiving add-on license. 

You should have one of the following in order to proceed: 

  1. Basic Archive plan that offers 50GB storage space for your mailboxes.
  2. Auto-Expansion Archive Plan where users get 50GB of additional storage after which 1GB of space will increase daily. The total limit is 1.5 TB.

  • Using the Retention Policy

Retention Policy is used to manage how long a piece of information and other data such as emails is stored. It helps greatly in deleting or archiving data based on the policy applied to it. This helps reduce confusion as it automatically organises the mailboxes and also manages the storage for the user or an organisation. You will have to configure the automatic deleting or archiving of files and data based on your requirements. 

  • Setting up PowerShell

You can use PowerShell to configure size and limits of usage of storage for a single user as well as multiple users using PowerShell commands. By configuring this, you can reduce the storage being consumed and this is a very simple process as PowerShell is already available on your computer. 

Note: When you use PowerShell, run it as an administrator. 
The script you can use to set the mailbox limit for a single user is:
  1. Set-Mailbox < UserID > -ProhibitSendQuota < Value > -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota < Value > -IssueWarningQuota < Value >.
  2. Here the “User ID” represents the email address and “Value” represents the size.
  3. To check the size of the mailbox, use the following script: Get-Mailbox | Select *quota
The script you can use to set the mailbox limit for multiple users is:
  1. you need to first connect multiple users to Office 365. Then run the following script.
  2. Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -ProhibitSendQuota < Value > -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota < Value > -IssueWarningQuota < Value >
Also read: How to Connect GoDaddy Domain to G Suite Via A Guided Tutorial
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