When mailboxes are moved from one database to another, Exchange doesn't fully delete the mailbox from the source database immediately upon completion of the move. Instead, the mailbox in the source mailbox database is switched to a soft-deleted state, which allows mailbox data to be accessed during a mailbox restore operation by using the new MailboxRestoreRequest cmdlet set.
The Exchange Server allows clients to access & make changes in data files from the client side but sometime it may happen that unknowingly you remove or delete your mailbox from Exchange Server. Thus, it creates a drastic situation where you have lost all your important emails by this act. So, in this article we will discuss about how to retrieve deleted mailbox in Exchange with easy manual as well as automated solutions.
What Happens When Exchange Mailboxes are Deleted?
When email-enabled user account is deleted from Exchange’s Active Directory or if the mailbox is deleted using Exchange Management console, then the deleted mailbox is retained as a disconnected mailbox. This is in accordance with the mailbox retention settings. The users can reconnect the mailbox to the original or another account if it is necessary to recover deleted emails in Exchange.
Important Points to be Noted to Retrieve Deleted Mailbox in Exchange
- The mailboxes which have been deleted can or cannot appear as a “disconnected mail” as soon as they have been deleted. It can take about 15 minutes or an hour before the mailbox is marked as disconnected. If it still not appear then it is a different issue & users need to look for an alternative solution to recover deleted emails in Exchange 2016.
- Sometimes, make sure to connect a disconnected mailbox with a user account but only, if the account does not have a mailbox associated with it already.
How to Connect a Disconnected Mailbox to Restore Deleted Emails
To retrieve deleted mailbox in Exchange the disconnected Exchange server mailbox can easily be connected in different ways. There are different methods like: Exchange Management Console (EMC) for Exchange 2007 & 2010, Exchange Management Shell (EMS) in Exchange Server (All versions), Exchange Admin Center (EAC) for Exchange 2013 & 2016 and also with the help of any third-party recovery software.
Step1: Connecting Disconnected Mailbox with EMC in Exchange 2007 & 2010
Use EMC method to retrieve deleted mailbox in Exchange 2007 & 2010. Execute certain steps which are stated below:
- Open EMC.
- In the EMC prompt box, expand the Recipient Configuration node. Then click the Disconnected Mailbox list present under it.
- Right-click on the mailbox which has to be retrieved & then click on Connect.
- Now, choose the ‘Mailbox Type’ in the connect mailbox prompt & click on next.
- Choose Existing User from the mailbox setting & then tab the Browse button.
- Now, from the Select User prompt choose the user account to which the mailbox has been connected. Click OK
- In the following Alias box add your mailbox name. Then click Next.
Thus, in this way user can connect with the disconnected mailbox to recover deleted mailbox.
Advantages
- This is the in-built utility so users are not required to make efforts to go for it.
- Free of cost
Disadvantages
- Time consuming task
- Requires Technical Knowledge
Step2: Connecting Disconnected Mailbox Using EMS
There is an another way to connect disconnected mailbox to retrieve deleted mailbox in Exchange (All versions supported) is by using EMS method. Here, the users need to use Set-Mailbox. The following is the syntax:
By using these syntax the user can connect with the disconnected mailboxes to restore deleted emails in Exchange.
Advantages
- Free utility, thus users don’t have to make an extra effort to look for it
- Available at zero pricing
Disadvantages
- Does not give 100% accurate results
- Requires experience to execute the process, as it is lengthy & time-consuming also
Step3: Using Exchange Administrative Center (EAC) in Exchange 2013 & 2016
The following method works by connecting the disabled mailbox to a user account. The below mentioned steps will guide you to connect a disabled user mailbox to retrieve deleted mailbox. With the help of this method you can also connect ‘linked mailboxes’ & disconnect ‘shared mailboxes’ again to the account of the user.
- Open EAC, go to Recipient then to Mailboxes
- Click on More options & then on Connect mailbox option, all the disconnected mailboxes in the Exchange will be shown. The disconnected mailboxes includes disabled mailboxes, deleted mailboxes & soft deleted mailboxes.
- Now, click on the disconnected mailbox & then click on the connect tab
- Click on the Yes option to reconnect
Step4: Use Third Party Utility to Retrieve Deleted Mailboxes
The another way in which user can retrieve deleted mailbox in Exchange Server is by using third-party utility i.e Exchange Recovery software. This software is capable to recover corrupt EDB file in Exchange easily & efficiently. However, it is the difficult task to select the best one from the bulk of software available in the market. To make the task easy for the user it is suggested that the user can use Exchange Recovery tool by SysTools to easily recover deleted emails.
Features
- The software supports to recover deleted emails from Exchange mailboxes
- Repairs Exchange private & public folder and even STM files
- Recover EDB mailboxes to Live Exchange Server, MS Outlook & Office 365
- Supports dismounted & offline EDB file recovery
- Maintains folder structure during Exchange Recovery
- Allows to export by category: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Journals & Notes
- Feature to apply File naming conventions to save Exchange emails in HTML, PDF, MSG & EML.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the manual methods such as using EMC & EMS do exist to retrieve deleted mailbox. However, it is clear from the above comparison of these manual methods with third-party Exchange Recovery tool that the latter is more convenient to restore deleted emails in Exchange 2016. Thus you can use the software & move ahead with the recovery procedure.
Exchange administrators often have to deal with various damages and logical errors in users’ mailboxes. Such logical errors appear in such problems as synchronization errors, Outlook hangs, incorrect representation of the folder items, wrong items number, search and public folders errors, etc.
These errors mostly occur due to failures on the Outlook, in case when client incorrectly updates MAPI flags during mailbox folders elements processing. Most often, this happens with shared mailboxes which is used by several users simultaneously. In most cases, the user may not even be aware of the presence of errors in the connected mailbox or folders, formally everything is working fine. However, with some errors, the user may experience problems while accessing the mailbox or certain folders, viewing or deleting emails or folders, etc.
If the user encounters such problems, the administrator of the Exchange server should to use one of three following ways to restore such a damaged mailbox.
- Importing data from Outlook running in cached mode to a .PST file, removing and re-creating a new mailbox for “problem” user and finally importing data from the PST file to the new Exchange mailbox. This method assumes a certain amount of manual manipulation on the user’s computer.Tip. How to import and export data to PST files in Exchange 2010/2013
- Complete unmounting of mailbox store and checking it with Isinteg.exe (Information Store Integrity Checker) utility which allows to fix damages in Exchange base on application level. This method requires quite long mail service down time for all users whose mailboxes are allocated in disconnected database.Note. In some cases, you can try to move all user`s mailboxes to the “healthy” mailbox database. In this case you can check store integrity without disabling a large number of users. However, this technique is not always applicable for the various reasons.
- Restore the Exchange database from backup (How to backup Exchange 2013 mailbox database), import data from a specific mailbox to PST file and further data transfer to re-created mailbox. This method has one disadvantage – all emails which got to user`s mailbox after last backup execution time can be lost.
Exchange server administrators had to use all methods described above up to Exchange 2010 SP1 release, when more convenient functions appeared to restore the logical structure of the damaged mailbox – the new PowerShell cmdlet New-MailboxRepairRequest. This cmdlet allows you to find and fix all logical errors and corruptions in the Exchange database on the application level. You can search and fix all errors for both a certain mailbox and all mailboxes in the database.
In some cases, you don’t have updated backup & New-MailboxRepairRequest command failed to repair corrupt mailbox. In this case you can use Stellar Repair for Exchange Software without losing the important data. Stellar Repair for Exchange is the best alternative of New-MailboxRepairRequest command, it repairs corrupt mailboxes & export it to PST, Live Exchange & Office 365.
In addition, when you use the New-MailboxRepairRequest cmdlet, you do not need to completely take the mail database to offline mode. Only one mailbox for each database is unavailable, the one for which the verification and integrity is currently being performed. Before performing any of described above radical ways to restore of mailbox integrity you should definitely try to use this PoSh command.
You can use this cmdlet to find, repair, and monitor corrupted mailboxes in all supported versions of Exchange 2010, 2013, and 2016.
The syntax of New-MailboxRepairRequest cmdlet is as follows:
Cmdlet allows you to find and fix the following corruption types in Exchange mailboxes:
- SearchFolder – errors in search folders;
- AggregateCounts – check and correction on the number of items in folders and their sizes;
- FolderView – incorrect content represented by folder views;
- ProvisionedFolder – folder logical structure damage.
Using the DetectOnly parameter, you can check one mailbox or mailbox database without performing any actions, for example:
The following example will start the process of woshub user mailbox analysis and recovery for all 4 types of damage.
The following example will start the process of woshub user mailbox analysis and recovery for all 4 types of damage:
The command runs in background mode and its results are not displayed in the PowerShell console. You can trace it by the taskID (RequestID) or / and with the help of Windows event log (event source: MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store; EventID 10059 – repair request start; EventID 10048 successful completion of the repair request).
The following EventIDs can also be useful (for ease of tracking the recovery procedure for Exchange mailboxes, you can combine them into a custom event view with the source MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store)
- 10044 – The mailbox repair request failed for provisioned folders
- 10045 – The database repair request failed for provisioned folders
- 10046 – The provisioned folders repair request completed successfully
- 10047 – A mailbox-level repair request started
- 10048 – The repair request successfully completed
- 10049 – The mailbox or database repair request failed because Exchange encountered a problem with the database or another task is running against the database
- 10050 – The mailbox repair request task skipped a mailbox
- 10051 – The database repair request was cancelled because the database was dismounted.
- 10059 – A database-level repair request started
- 10062 – Corruption was detected
- 10064 – A Public Folder repair request started
Tip. Special cmdlet Get-MailboxRepairRequest appeared in Exchange 2013, which allows you to get the status of the mailbox repair task.
One of the features of the New-MailboxRepairRequest cmdlet – after it is started, the mailbox repair process cannot be interrupted without stopping the Exchange Information Store service and unmounting the mailbox database.
If there are several mailbox databases on the server, in order to maintain the performance of the Exchange server, it is not recommended to run New-MailboxRepairRequest at the same time for a large number of databases (although only one MailboxRepairRequest process is supported for one database and up to 100 repair requests per server).
Let`s look at one small case as a practice-oriented example of cmdlet usage.
The Exchange 2016 user encountered the inability to view messages in one of the Outlook folders. Appointed folder was recovered from mailbox backup. However it’s appeared impossible to delete this folder with a help of Outlook / Outlook Web App / MFCMAPI (soft or hard deletion). When you try to delete a folder in Outlook 2016, you receive the following error:
Cannot delete this folder. Right-click the folder, and then click Properties to check your permissions for this folder. See the folder owner or your administrator to change your permissions.Outlook is synchronizing local changes made to items in this folder. You cannot remove this folder until the synchronization with the server is complete
To check and restore the Exchange mailbox integrity, the following PoSh command was run:
After the successful completion of recovery operation (eventid 10048), the corrupted folder immediately disappeared from Outlook Web App. As for the Outlook, here we had to delete local cache (ost file) for correct mailbox display.