Solved! - Exchange 2010 not Sending Large Attachments

Author: Aakshit Rajput

Has it happened with you that while trying to send an email with a big attached file via Exchange 2010 and faced the error mentioning that "attachment size exceeds the allowable limit"? If yes, then you would possibly have gotten some idea by now about the messaging limits in Exchange Server.

Due to these size limits messages, Exchange users face problems while sending/receiving large emails or emails with large attachments.

So, there's a requirement to vary the bounds assail message or attachment. You have two workarounds for alternating the set message size limits – using Exchange Management Console and Exchange PowerShell.

We will discuss here the methods to change the max email size in Exchange 2010.

Modify Message Size Limits Using Exchange Management Console

Exchange 2010 users can enhance the message size limit using the Exchange Management Console.

Note: By default, the maximum message size is 10MB for both incoming and outgoing messages in Exchange 2010.

For this, open the Exchange Management Console. Then, expand the Organization Configuration then Hub Transport. Go to Global Settings tab and then to move Settings; open its Properties. A new panel with Transport Settings Properties will get open. On the overall tab, you'll easily modify the utmost receive size and Maximum send size for emails in KB (which is by default set at 10MB). It can be increased up to 2GB of size.

Now, you can change the maximum message size limits for Send and Receive Connectors in the same manner. For that, follow these paths in the Exchange Management Console:

  1. For Send Connectors: Go to Organization Configuration>> Hub Transport>> Send Connectors ‘send connector’ Properties.
  2. For Receive Connectors: Go to Server Configuration>> Hub Transport ‘Hub Transport’>> Receive Connectors ‘Connector’>> Properties.

Here, you can set the Maximum message size as per the requirement.

Modify Message Size Limits using Exchange Management Shell

There is another way to modify the Maximum message size, which is via running cmdlets in the Exchange Management Shell.

To run cmdlets in the Exchange Management Shell, users must have administrative rights. You can create a hub transport rule to set the maximum size of the email attachment and also to send an email rejection message:

"New-TransportRule -Name LargeAttach -AttachmentSizeOver 50MB -RejectMessageReasonText "Message attachment size over 50MB – email rejected."

You can get the present values for the utmost send/receive messages with the subsequent cmdlets.

A. Get Global Transport Configuration message size limits with this command:

Get-TransportConfig | fl MaxSendSize,MaxReceiveSize

B. To urge the Send Connector message size limits, execute this command:

Get-Sendconnector "" | fl Name,MaxMessageSize

C. To understand the present Receive Connector message size limits, use command:

Get-Receiveconnector -Identity "" | fl Name,MaxMessagesize

With these commands, you'll get the present set message size limits for both send and receive messages.

Now, to switch this recent message size limits, use the below-given commands.

Suppose we are changing the message size limits from 10 MB to 50 MB.

A. To switch Transport Configuration message size limits, run the subsequent command:

Set-TransportConfig -MaxReceiveSize 30MB -MaxSendSize 50MB

B. Similarly, for Send and Receive Connectors, use these commands:

Set-Sendconnector "" -MaxMessageSize 50MB

Set-ReceiveConnector "" -MaxMessageSize 50MB

The issue of non-delivery of the large attachments could be due to corruption in the Exchange database files as well, and this could be resolved by the Sysinfo for Exchange Server Recovery tool. This tool has a smart algorithm to recover EDB data. So, try Exchange Recovery software for any type of EDB file corruption errors.

Conclusion

The reason for the delivery failure of huge attachments might be message size limits or corruption issues. With the Exchange Management Console or Exchange Management Shell, administrators can set the utmost message size limits. But if there are database corruption issues, they ought to try a knowledgeable Exchange recovery solution.