This mailbox exceeded the maximum number of large items when migrating a user's mailbox data from the on-premises environment to Microsoft 365

Original KB number:   2584294

Problem

You use one of the following to try to migrate a user's mailbox data from your on-premises messaging environment to Microsoft 365:

  • The New Migration Batch Wizard in the Exchange admin center of Microsoft 365
  • The E-mail Migration wizard in the Exchange admin center of Microsoft 365
  • Exchange Online PowerShell

However, you receive an error message that resembles the following:

FailureType : TooManyLargeItemsPermanentException

FailureSide : Target

Message : Error: This mailbox exceeded the maximum number of large items that were specified for this request. --> MapiExceptionMaxSubmissionExceeded: IExchangeFastTransferEx.TransferBuffer failed (hr=0x80004005, ec=1242)

This issue occurs if the user's mailbox contains one or more messages that exceed the 150-megabyte (MB) message limit.

Solution

To fix this issue, locate and remove messages that are larger than 150 MB from the user's on-premises mailbox. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Access the user's on-premises mailbox by using Microsoft Outlook.
  2. Arrange all items in all folders of the user's mailbox by size. Sort the items from largest to smallest so that the largest items are at the top of the list.
  3. Locate the items that are larger than 150 MB. If these items contain important info, save them to another location such as the local computer or a local Personal Folders file (.pst). Then, delete the items that are larger than 150 MB from the user's mailbox.
  4. Return to the Exchange admin center, and then resume the migration.
  5. After the migration is complete, the data can be reimported to the Exchange Online mailbox.

More information

For more info about how to import items into Outlook in Microsoft 365, go to the following Microsoft websites:

For more info about Microsoft 365 messaging limits, see Exchange Online limits.

Still need help? Go to Microsoft Community.