You can change the message size limit in Exchange Server by restricting the total size or restricting individual components (like header, attachment or number or recipient). In this post we will discuss all the techniques to limit the size of message in Exchange Server using EAC or Shell commands.
Different types of Message Size Limit
Message Header Limit: Email Message Header information includes details of the route that the email follow, sender and recipient(s) details, and whether the email message was scanned for spam or viruses. You can set message. The size of header is determined by the characters present in each header format and total number of header fields. Each character takes one byte of space.
Message Size Limit: The Message size limit can be set on incoming and outgoing messages. These limits apply to the total size of a message i.e. message header, body, and the attachments.
Attachment Size Limit: Please note that the attachment size limit applies to the size of an individual attachment only. The message might contain more than one attachment which can affect the overall size limit of message.
Recipient Limit: Limits the number of recipient which exist in To, Cc, Bcc of message.
The email size restriction for user mailbox will be applied in the following order
- Global Transport configuration settings
- Send connector size restriction
- Receive connector size restriction
- In the user mailbox properties of send and receive size limit
How To Check Current Size limit in Exchange Server
Global Transport Settings:
Get-TransportConfig | Format-List -Property MaxReceiveSize, MaxSendSize
All Send Connectors:
Get-SendConnector | Format-List -Property Identity, MaxMessageSize
All Receive Connectors
Get-ReceiveConnector | Format-List -Property Identity, MaxMessageSize
All Routing Group Connectors for the organizations, which got transitioned from legacy Exchange versions
Get-RoutingGroupConnector | Format-List -Property Identity, MaxMessageSize
Now, we will set 40 MB as the maximum size for e-mail message and attachment for in-bound and out-bound emails.
Global Transport Settings:
Set-TransportConfig -MaxReceiveSize 40MB -MaxSendSize 40MB
All Send Connectors:
Get-SendConnector | Set-SendConnector -MaxMessageSize 40MB
All Receive Connectors
Get-ReceiveConnector | Set-ReceiveConnector -MaxMessageSize 40MB
All Routing Group Connectors for the legacy Exchange organizations
Get-RoutingGroupConnector | Set-RoutingGroupConnector -MaxMessageSize 40MB
Change Message Size Limit in Exchange Server
You can change attachment size limit in Exchange Server using EAC (Exchange Admin Center) or Shell command. The process is almost same for all the versions of Exchange Server including the Exchange Server 2013 and previous versions 2010, 2007and 2003. When a mailbox is created in Exchange Server environment there is no pre-defined size limit for sending and receiving the messages. In this post we will see the two most popular methods for changing the size limit for Exchange Server.
Changing the Message Size Limit in Exchange Server using EAC (Exchange Admin Center)
EAC (Exchange Admin Center) is the web based management console in the latest Exchange 2013 Server. EAC is the replacement of EMC (Exchange Management Console) and ECP (Exchange Control Panel) which were the two interfaces used to manage Exchange Server 2010. Below are the steps to change the size limit in exchange server 2013 using EAC. Since EAC is web based management console (as stated earlier) so you need to access it by using your web browser (using ECP virtual Directory URL).
Step 1: In the EAC, navigate to Recipients > Mailboxes.
Step 2: In the list of user mailboxes, click the mailbox that you want to change the message size limits for, and then click Edit
Step 3: On the mailbox properties page, click Mailbox Features.
Step 4: Under Message Size Restrictions, click View details to view and change the maximum message size for sent messages and received messages.
Step 5: Click OK, and then click Save to save your changes.
Use Shell to Configure Message Size Limit
In this example I will show you how to set message size limit using powershell command. Here, I am using command to sets the maximum size for sent messages to 20 MB and the maximum size for received messages to 30 MB for the mailbox of Mark.
Set-Mailbox “Mark” -MaxSendSize 20mb -MaxReceiveSize 30mb
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