For several years I have been trying to find a way to bring back the 5.5 functionality I had in cleaning mailboxes. I used to regularly clean mailboxes by deleting any unread messages over so-many-days old. We have several thousand mailboxes that belong to folks who never use them (custodial help, bus drivers, etc) and they are always going over quota. That ability was a godsend to me. I could set that and clean the 20,000 mailboxes we had and all was right withmy world again. When we went to 2000 that all went away, and 2003 didn't bring it back either. I have asked so many Microsoft folks about this and no one ever has an answer for me. With us going to 2007 in the next few weeks, would it be possible to use a cmdlet in Powershell to delete messages based on whether the message is read or unread and over so many days old ??? Exchange has to stampthe messageread or unread somehow,so there must be a way... Any ideas out there????? I mentioned itin a 2007 class today and others would love that capability as well.

You can use Managed Folders in Exchange 2007. There is also a cmdlet called Export-Mailbox that you can use for deleting stuff from users mailboxes In Exchange 2003 you can create a recipient policy with 'mailbox manager settings' type and apply it to users. or use exmerge to export stuff out, its basically what Export.Mailbox does.

But I want to specifically target unread messages in about 25,000 mailboxes, not ALL messages in an inbox. Many of users don't file saved mail in other folders...they just use the Inbox for storage.

You can specify folder (inbox only) and rules for which messages to delete/move to Deleted Items. Search criteria for messages cannot be unread as you say but can be messages older than a certain number of days If there is a very old unread message in my inbox, is there any interest in saving it? In my opinion,probably not.

You are right -- if there is an old UNREAD message in your Inbox, it doesn't need to be saved. If it is a READ message that you are just saving, it DOES need to be saved. I don't know. It was SO EASY in 5.5 and losing that capability just hurts. Being able to clean our unread messages over 90 days enabled us to gain back so much space and our 25,000 users didn't mind. If we start deleting all messages over 90 (or 180 or whatever), we'll bring down the wrath of Khan. If anyone EVER figures out a way of doing this, please post!