I had my users clean out thier mailboxes and was able to get rid of 3gigs of emails. However, the exchange store file sizedid not change. Is there some kind of utility that I need to run on my Exchange Server to reduce this file size? Exchange Server 2003.

Here is the link you should read. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328804 Thanks, J.G.

In addition to what John said, it's always useful to check event 1221 in the application log to get an estimate of the free space in the database that can be reclaimed afterrunning ESEUTIL in defrag mode. However, before you do this, question the need for running it. Unless you are really tight on disk space or are going to reclaim > 30% I'd question why bother? You are going to take the database offline, therefore affecting the users, potentially waste some of your personal time running the tool, and additionally you are going to increase the risk factor of causing problems by running ESEUTIL. I'm not saying that you *will* cause problems, but running these tools when you don't need to always adds risk (what if there's a power outage whilst it's processing, etc?). All that for 3GB of space? Just ask yourself whether it's really worth it first. Oh, and take a backup before you run the tool of course.

Thanks for the advice. We have decided not to do this as we do not have the space on the harddrive to run the defrag. We have decided to move the exchange store to a new larger harddrive. Thanks.

I was very tempted to post about the same thing, but I was tired, so I posted the "How To" and figured he would figure it out himself. Thanks for posting what I was being to lazy to do. lol...

No worries John - I had a spare few mins to type it up, so thought it worthwhile.