<p>In September 2012, I speculated whether the change in OST format in Outlook 2013 and the introduction of the "slider" would have any effect on users. As it happens, the slider which allows users to decide how much of their mailbox should be cached in the OST for offline access might have a more long-term effect on Exchange.</p><p>When introduced in Exchange 2010, Microsoft positioned archive mailboxes as the repository for information that did not need to be accessed on a frequent basis. The logic is that users should be able to decide on the items that they need to have access to all the time, even during network outages, and keep that data in their primary mailbox. Anything else goes in the archive, which is not synchronized by Outlook into its OST.</p><p>Assuming that users will follow any logical form of reasoning when it comes to the management of their mailbox is often a fool's errand. The advent of dependable and fast search facilities in both client and server has let people leave Inboxes become cluttered and full with little of the old-time movement going on to move items into a well-organized filing structure.</p><p>Life being what it is, Exchange 2010 and 2013 provide retention policies and tags to allow administrators to "help" users. And indeed, if you enable an archive for a mailbox, Exchange immediately applies the default MRM (Messaging Records Management) policy to that mailbox. This has the side-effect of forcing the Mailbox Folder Assistant (MFA) to move any items over two years old into the archive the next time that MFA processes the mailbox, something that can come as a shock to an unwary user!</p><p><a href="http://windowsitpro.com/blog/outlook-2013-slider-and-its-potential-effect-archive-mailboxes">Keep reading...</a></p>