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Recover Deleted mailbox on exchange 2010

In case you have deleted mailbox my mistake, you may still be able to recover if your backup has not run yet.  You can recover mailbox as the same user or attach to a new user. If you have deleted the Active Directory account when you had delete Mailbox, you need to re-create it first then you will be able to attach the disconnected mailbox to a user. If you don’t see anything under Disconnected mailbox, then you will not be able to reconnect without restoring from your backup first. If you want to remove mailbox check post How to remove Mailbox only on exchange 2010

Reconnect disconnected Mailbox

Open Exchange Management Console
Expand Recipient Configuration>Disconnected Mailbox
On the right side select user mailbox, you want to reconnect.

You will need to choose mailbox type, if it’s User Mailbox, Room Mailbox, Equipment Mailbox or Linked Mailbox, based on your selection you will see different options to choose from, here I am selecting User Mailbox

You will have option to choose Matching user or Existing User

  • Matching: you will not get option to select user, it will automatically connect Matching user
  • Existing user: Then you will get option to search same or another user, if user does not exist, create it first then try reconnecting.

How to Remove Mailbox via Power shell

Open Exchange Management Shell

Remove-Mailbox –Identity “NameOfUser”

Then it will give you message “Are you sure you want to perform this action?” once you are sure type y and press Enter

If you don’t want to get confirmation:

Remove-Mailbox –Identity “NameOfUser” -Confirm:$false


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How to remove Mailbox only on exchange 2010

Exchange 2010 is very old and its extended supports ends in 2020, so you should have already migrated over to a newer version of Exchange or to cloud Microsoft office 365.  In case you have not and wanting to do clean up, before your migration, there are cases that mailbox no longer needed but Windows login needed.  Here is how to remove mailbox only, without removing Active Directory login for the user. You can see Microsft Lifecycle at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle

How to Disable Mailbox

  • Open Exchange Management Console
  • Expand Recipient Configuration>Mailbox
  • On the right side select the user mailbox you want to remove
  • Right Click on the user and select Disable

You will get a message to confirm, that you want to Disable, which will remove the Exchange properties from the Windows user object and mark the mailbox in the database for removal. Select Yes

Then that mailbox goes in Disconnected Mailbox and will be kept based on setting set for settings under:

  • Organization Configuration>Database Management>
  • Look at properties of mailbox then click on Limits tab
  • You will see “Deletion settings“
  • Keep deleted items for (days): x
  • Keep deleted mailboxes for (days): x

Also, if you have checked the box “Don’t permanently delete items until the database has been backed up.” then it will not delete until it’s been backed up. This way if you deleted by mistake wrong user mailbox you can re-connected.

How to Disable Mailbox via Power shell

Open Exchange Management Shell:
Disable-Mailbox –Identity “NameOfUser”
Then it will give you message “Are you sure you want to perform this action?” once you are sure type y and press Enter

Or

If you don’t want to get confirmation:
Disable-Mailbox –Identity “NameOfUser” -Confirm:$false

That’s it, if the name does not match it will give you error

As you can see Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 is ending it’s extended support by 1/14/2020