How to Recover Deleted Mailboxes in Exchange Server 2010

Deleted mailboxes and user accounts are retained as disconnected mailboxes and we can recover them within the mailbox retention intervals. We can use Exchange Management Shell to recover deleted mailboxes. Deleted items are kept in dumpster till the retention period. The default retention period is 30 days.

We can use Cmdlet or Exchange Management Console to reconnect the disconnected mailbox to an existing Active Directory user.

How to Connect a Disconnected mailbox from Exchange Management Console

1. Open the Exchange Management Console.

2. Expand Recipient Configuration and click on Disconnected Mailbox.

3. From the Action pane, select the Connect Mailbox wizard.

How to Connect a Disconnected mailbox from Cmdlet

Syntax:

Connect-Mailbox -Identity OrigMailboxIdentity  -Database DatabaseIdentity -User NewUserIdentity

[-ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy PolicyId] [-Alias Alias] [-DomainController DCName]

[-ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy PolicyId] [-ManagedFolderMailboxPolicyAllowed <$true | $false>]

[-Archive <$true | $false>] [-Equipment <$true | $false>] [-Room <$true | $false>] [-Shared <$true | $false>] [-ValidateOnly <$true | $false>]

[-LinkedCredential Credential] [-LinkedDomainController DCName]

[-LinkedMasterAccount UserId]

Usage:

Connect-Mailbox -Identity "Sachin Mehn"

-Database "Manager Mails" -User "TECHPEOPLES\sachm -Alias "sachm"

Connect-Mailbox -Identity "Sachin Mehn"

-Database "Manager Mails" -LinkedDomainController Exch001

-LinkedMasterAccount "TECHPEOPLES\sachm"

We can also delete the disconnected mailboxes from the mailbox database by using Remove-Mailbox cmdlet.