Need to route mail to new mail address

Question

I have a massively over populated inbox that I need to kill. It is currently at 140GB and rising.

I have created a new mailbox, with a retention policy to stop it happening again. How do I send all new mail to the newly created inbox so that takes over receiving these mails and stops storing them in the old one? I will be deleting the huge mailbox after I've extracted the last years worth of emails so forwarding isn't an option.

Why don't you just archive your exiting mailbox to a PST file and set a retention policy on it? Why create a new mailbox? That seems like the hard way of addressing the issue. — joeqwerty, Jun 21 '16 at 11:15
Joeqwerty is right. A Rube Goldberg machine is not required to solve your problem! — SamErde, Jun 21 '16 at 11:32
If I add a custom retention policy of say 400 days, will that then delete everything over 400 days old? — BeardyDrummer, Jun 21 '16 at 13:17

xstnc · Answer 1 · 2016-06-21T12:37:59.157

I had to do the same thing, but for a different reason. What I did was change the SMTP address of the mailboxes.

Example:

BigBox@example.com < This box is filled with clutter

NewShinyBox@example.com < Empty

I created the "NewShinyBox@example.com" mailbox and smtp-address on the Exchange server. At the time I was ready for switching, I removed the "BigBox@example.com" SMTP address from the old cluttered mailbox, and added a new one like "BigBox_old@example.com". On the new mailbox, I added the SMTP address "BigBox@example.com" as an extra SMTP address.

All new incoming mail would be routed to the new mailbox, while the old mailbox would still be alive and operational. It will not recieve any new emails, but you will be able to access it like any other mailbox. This would give you time to clean it out and copy the emails you want to keep before removing the box itself.

If needed and if you wish (I did this), set the SMTP PRIMARY address of the new mailbox to the old primary address (in this example "BigBox@example.com").

Edit: When doing this, it will take some time to update your internal address book. Mail from outside of the organization, will end up in the correct place - but internal mail can use a bit longer to reach the correct box; but atleast you're on the correct path!

Please refrain from using random domain names and use one of the [RFC 6761](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6761#section-6.5) reserved domain names such as `example.com`, `example.org` or similar . Please refer to [this Q&A](http://meta.serverfault.com/q/963/37681) for our recommendations with regards to how and what (not) to obfuscate in questions and answers. — HBruijn, Jun 21 '16 at 12:35

Need to route mail to new mail address

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