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A better way to recover a mailbox

The Exchange Team 13 Jan 2015 303 PM

Update 06112015 We have now disabled the old method of recovering a mailbox which involved using Get‐RemovedMailbox and New‐Mailbox ndash

RemovedMailbox and we no longer support the recovery of hard deleted mailboxes

The process of recovering deleted users or mailboxes in a hybrid or cloud‐only organization can be frustrating When dealing with these scenarios customers

would sometimes end up with multiple mailboxes for a single user find that some emails are missing or even lose data associated with other services Often

they would find those situations difficult to troubleshoot and they would call Microsoft support for help

For a long time now Exchange Online has had a capability called soft delete that allows a user to recover a mailbox with very little effort Letrsquos take a look at

how a mailbox recovery should be approached

Scenario User Is Accidentally Deleted Along with Their Mailbox

First you need to know if the deleted user was managed on‐premises or in the cloud

If the user was managed in the cloud

If the source of authority for the user is in the cloud meaning they are not syncrsquod from on‐premises Active Directory you can restore the user from the Admin

Portal at httpportalofficecom Navigate to Users and select Deleted Users There you will see the option to restore the user

If user was synchronized from on‐premises AD

If the user account was being synchronized from on‐premises you should restore the user on‐premises The mailbox will automatically reconnect

IMPORTANT NOTE Recreating the user on‐premises will not have the same effect because the Globally Unique Identifier GUID used in the recovery process

would be different

The proper way to restore a deleted user is documented at httpsupportmicrosoftcomkb2619308 Thatrsquos it There is no need to take any additional actions

What If These Actions Do Not Work

There could still be times when soft recovery actions will not fix the users account For instance the user may have a corrupt account or the account may

have been permanently deleted Another possibility is that the user is no longer with the company but the mailbox is used as a job‐related mailbox and needsto be available to a new user

For these scenarios we have the New‐MailboxRestoreRequest cmdlet This allows you to merge the data from one user or archive mailbox to another user or

you can archive the active mailbox Unlike the recovery process above which is the best approach New‐MailboxRestoreRequest allows you to merge the data

from a soft‐deleted mailbox into an alternate active mailbox or archive mailbox

Why Is This a Benefit

Previously if you could not recover both the user and the mailbox you would have to perform an unsupported process of hard‐deleting a mailbox This

process was unreliable and sometimes caused a ripple effect on other services such as SharePoint and Lync If the process failed you were left with very

limited options and ultimately had to call support

What Do I Need To Do To Take Advantage of This New Option

All you need to do is create a new user with a mailbox and merge the data The way you create the user with a new mailbox will depend on if you use DirSync

or the Microsoft Online Portal to create users

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1 Create the user and Mailbox

Using DirSync

Create the user and remote mailbox from the on‐premises Exchange management tools

Force a directory synchronization

Not Using DirSync

Log into httpportalofficecom

Create and license the user

2 Run the cmdlet to merge the accounts This is done from PowerShell connected to Exchange Online

A Connect PowerShell to Exchange Online To do this see httptechnetmicrosoftcomen‐uslibraryjj984289 v=exchg150 aspx

B Run the following Command and retrieve the GUID for the soft‐deleted mailbox that you want to restore Get‐Mailbox ‐SoftDeletedMailbox

C Run a cmdlet similar to the following to restore the mailbox New‐MailboxRestoreRequest ‐SourceMailbox ltGUID from Step 2Bgt ‐

TargetMailbox ltGUID from Step 1gt

NOTE 1 If the mailbox source andor target is an archive use the following switches ‐SourceIsArchive andor ‐TargetIsArchive

NOTE 2 The value in Step 2C calls for the account GUIDs but they can take other values such as an SMTP address or a UPN The reason we recommend

using GUIDs is to reduce the chances that there will be any confusion or conflict between the source and destination

Are there limitations

This merge capability does have some limitations For instance you cannot merge data from a source mailbox that is active Letrsquos say you have a user Jane

who is still licensed and using her mail You would be unable to merge her data into Tomrsquos mailbox with this new approach This new process is not meant to

be used for backup and duplication purposes this is a recovery tool only

Another time when this tool will not work is when the mailbox is hard‐deleted If you manually remove a user account in Office 365 and then remove the user

from the Recycle Bin the mailbox would be hard‐deleted This is the potentially damaging scenario that was briefly discussed above Again this merge

approach is for recovering soft‐deleted mailboxes when the normal recovery options are not available to you

NOTE Unless you place the mailbox on litigation or in‐place hold prior to hard‐deleting the user account there is no recovery method available to you from

Exchange Online to restore the mailbox or its contents If you place the mailbox on hold first it will be flagged as an inactive mailbox and the New‐

MailboxRestoreRequest CMDlet will be available to you For more information on inactive mailboxes see Manage inactive mailboxes in Exchange Online

Timothy Heeney

Comments

jpalarchio 14 Jan 2015 332 A

Great article Any additional notes you can provide around restore options for inactive mailboxes mailboxes on litigation hold or IPH where the user ha

since been deleted

Thomas Stensitzki MCSM MCM MCT

14 Jan 2015 1246

The new Approach provides a much bettereasier way to recover mailboxes Thanks

14 Jan 2015 254

Timothy Heeney MSFT

jpalarchio when you have an inactive mailbox it will essentially be in a soft deleted state meaning the steps similar to what is documented in this post wi

work for recovering the data

Timothy Heeney MSFT

14 Jan 2015 436

jpalarchio ‐ The approach documented in this blog will work for inactive mailboxes as well Inactive Mailboxes should show up in a similar way that soft

deleted mailboxes do

Ryan Yates 90 14 Jan 2015 619

7172019 A Better Way to Recover a Mailbox - Exchange Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

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10122015 A better way to recover a mailbox - Exchange Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

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I may be wrong on this but Im pretty sure that having the AD Recycle Bin enabled stopped DirSync from being able to preform the sync ‐ at least that wa

the impression i got when using OnRamp for my test environment

Jeff Guillet [MCM MVP Author Blogger] 15 Jan 2015 514 A

Good stuff Tim

What happens to the soft deleted mailbox after the New‐MailboxRestoreRequest cmdlet is run Is it empty Could it be merged again to another mailbox

Timothy Heeney MSFT

16 Jan 2015 344

Jeff ‐ sorry for the delay I had to test it to verify You can only perform the restore using the MailboxRstoreRequest cmdlet to one mailbox subsequent

restore request of the same soft deleted mailbox to other active mailboxes fail

vigss 9 Feb 2015 955

Is this command available to all tenants in Office 365 I am global admin with Organization Management role however I could not run the command New‐

MailboxRestoreRequest The term New‐MailboxRestoreRequest is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet function

Esterno rozer 17 Mar 2015 1029 A

EDB recovery software is an advance and effective third party software it can easily restore mailbox folders‐ Inbox Outbox Sent items Journals Notes

Task Draft etc The software can fix edb files error and database corruption issue httpwwwexchangeserverrecoveryfilesorg

ThomasWieland 17 Mar 2015 1219

Hi nice write Glad you are recommending this as I work exactly that way already ‐ But maybe allow me to suggest a vital enhancement In order to resto

the deleted mailbox so that users wonacutet recognize that there is a new mailbox acting as the old one Do not only takeover the SMTP address es also tak

over the old LegacyExchangeDN as X400 Alias address to the new mailbox leave that LegacyDN as is This will suppress NDR messages when other

users who wrote to that deleted mailbox before andor have that mailbox in their contacts folder

Esterno rozer 18 Mar 2015 1040 A

Exchange edb repair software is capable to instantly restore mailbox from corrupt exchange server database public folder The software easily fix exchan

server corruption issue and convert corrupt edb to pst format httpwwwedb2pstnet

rogermilano 7 Apr 2015 1206

To repair inaccessible exchange server mailbox you can use Eseutil and Isinteg It provide soft and hard database recovery If you want to use third party

software then try edb repair software httpwwwedbtoliveexchangeedbpstnet

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