I have deleted some lots of mailboxes of exited staff and i want to free up space on the database folder where the ms exchange data is residing. How can i purge these deleted items from Exchange 2007.... it was easier in Exchange 2003 because i could just clean up and or purge deleted items. Exchange 2007 is living nightmare for me in administering the same! please help!

Set Deleted Item Retention to 0. Set Mailbox Retention to 0. ( Setting to 0 means all the messages and mailboxes are unrecoverable - be sure to set back after you are done) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125266(EXCHG.80).aspx Configuring Deleted Mailbox and Deleted Item Retention Set IS Maintenance to Run Customized and set to a block of time to start now and continue all day if desired. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629590(EXCHG.80).aspx How to Set the Maintenance Schedule for a Database You can monitor online defrag: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691410(EXCHG.80).aspx How to Monitor Online Defragmentation Events 1221 will tell you how much free space is avail http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186291 Cannot determine free space available in Exchange database

Hi, Deleted pages are marked free for usage during the Online Maintenance of the database. However, online maintenance does not reduce the size of the database file, any deleted pages remain inside the file and will be used for new data. To free up the disk space of deleted pages you must run offline defragmentation. Thanks Allen

:-)

Yes, and to add to Allen's post. In most cases, there is no need to do an offline defrag as Exchange will simply resuse the free space in the database.

Andy; I remain extremely grateful for your input... what is discouraging though is that i am desperate for space in the exachange box. Now that you have said that i do not have to do offline defrag how reliable then is the online defrag?

Hi, Indeed, ESE will always try to use existing deleted pages before actually growing the size of the database file. Therefore in more situations you will not need to perform an offline defrag. Thanks Allen