system services exchange accounts using a lot of cellular data

Question

Level 1

7 points

system services exchange accounts using a lot of cellular data

The Settings - Cellular - System Services - Exchange Accounts is showing a lot of data usage on my iPhone 6. I don't know what an exchange account is. How can I stop these from drawing cellular data other than completely turning off all cellular data? I have already disabled location services on my phone because it was drawing a lot of data in the "Time & Location" category. More broadly, I have not had a problem with my phone drawing a lot of cellular data until last week when I upgraded to iOS 8.3. Is there something wrong with this software update that it is causing me to draw so much cellular data when doing nothing?

iPhone 6, iOS 8

Posted on Apr 21, 2015 11:21 AM

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Answer 1

AppleJoe

Community Manager

Apr 24, 2015 11:58 AM in response to Davpcampbell

Hello Davpcampbell,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

I understand that you are seeing a lot of data coming from Exchange Accounts on your iPhone under Settings > Cellular > System Services. Exchange accounts are typically Mail accounts that push other data as well, such as contacts and calendars among other things. A lot of time, these type of Mail accounts are use for business. If you do have an Exchange account on your device, you may be able to limit some of the data being used by turning off un-needed features of the account as shown in step 4 of the attached article.

Set up Exchange ActiveSync on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Have a great day,

Joe

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Answer 2

808Tiger

Level 1

9 points

Jun 1, 2015 6:58 PM in response to AppleJoe

Hi, Joe:

I'm getting here a little late but I'm having a similar issue with my iPhone 6 (vers 8.3). I don't have an Exchange Account listed in Mail, Contacts, Calendars--just Gmail, Outlook and iCloud, so, I'm wondering how this could be my second highest data hog...? I am connected via wifi this morning and the data usage is still creeping upward. Can you please advise?

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Answer 3

Jun 1, 2015 7:01 PM in response to 808Tiger

If it lists Exchange accounts you have one. A corporate Gmail account or Corporate Outlook account is an MS Exchange account.

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Answer 4

808Tiger

Level 1

9 points

Jun 1, 2015 7:20 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Aloha, Lawrence. Thanks for the response.

I was connected to an Office 365 account at my old job. Since quitting, I deleted that account. Yesterday, I tried deleting the Outlook account from my iPhone and then reinstalling, making sure to choose Outlook as the account type. I took note of the data amount, then tried looking up an old, sent email in Outlook and, noticed that my Exchange Accounts data usage shot up by around 300 MB after the search window populated.

Sorry if this is a simple situation and I'm just not getting it... I don't know where else to turn.

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