Increasing the Rules Quota limit in Exchange Server 2007

Many admins probably wouldn’t know that there is a size limit set on mailbox rules.  The default value in Exchange 2007 and 2010 is 64 KB.  It may seem small but up until recently I never had a need to change this value at a global or user level.

Every so often, though, you come across a user that’s the exception rather than the rule… so to say.  The only indication you’ll get that the user is over the limit is a warning on the user’s desktop when they attempt to create another rule via Outlook.

“One or more rules could not be uploaded to Exchange server and have been deactivated. This could be because some of the parameters are not supported or there is insufficient space to store all your rules.”

Using Outlook Web Access will present the user with a slightly different message.  OWA seems to do a better job at a more descriptive error message and even suggests a resolution for the user.

“Outlook Web Access cannot save the rule that you specified. Either the rule exceeds the maximum size limit for individual rules, or all your rules together, including this rule, exceed the size limit for rules. Remove some conditions, actions, or exceptions and try again.”

If the user is unable, or in my case unwilling, to clean up some rules.  You can hop onto an Exchange server via Powershell and change their Rules Quota limit.

As mentioned, the default limit is 64 KB.  There is a hard maximum which is 256 KB.  Any value up to 256 KB is valid to use.  In the example below I select a user via their email address to increase their quota to the maximum 256 KB.

get-mailbox [email protected] | Set-Mailbox -RulesQuota 256kb

We can easily check the new rules quota size for the user with the below command.

get-mailbox [email protected] | ft RulesQuota

Microsoft Knowledge Base article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886616

4 thoughts on “Increasing the Rules Quota limit in Exchange Server 2007”

  1. Not sure if anyone reads this, but I had the same issue. I figured out that I needed to run powershell to bump them up to 256. Then I tested it by logging into the mailbox and creating a test rule, and it work. The client however is still getting the error message when she tried to add a rule to the mailbox from her computer. Strange. I had her create a new Outlook profile with cached mode turned off, and then try it again. Same error. I logged into the mailbox and tested it again from my computer and the error does not show up. How can this be? Suggestions?

    1. it just started working. I exported the rules, and was going to delete them, then import them again, but I decided to try it again from the client’s computer and it worked with no error. I don’t think time was the issue. I made the change from the server about 2 weeks before she tried to create another rule from her end.

  2. Had the same issue with one mailbox on Exchange 2007. Increasing the quota made no difference still got the 3004 errors when enabling OOA.
    Moving the mailbox online to another database resolved the issue.

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