Recovering a Mailbox

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Deleted mailboxes can be recovered only by restoring them from a backup. However, mailboxes that belong to users who were deleted from Active Directory can be recovered by associating them with existing users who do not have mailboxes. This is named reconnecting the mailbox. When you reconnect a mailbox, Exchange presents a list of users from which you can choose. Even if you have re-created the original deleted user, the re-created user object has a different security ID (SID) and will not be recognized as the original user. The selected user becomes the new owner of the mailbox.

Note

In specific disaster recovery circumstances, you may have to remove Exchange attributes from a user object before reconnecting the Exchange mailbox. If Exchange-related attributes are present, Exchange may assume that the user already has a mailbox, and leave the user off of the list of possible users who you can associate with the mailbox.

There are two methods for recovering mailboxes:

  • Recover a single mailbox on a single mailbox store. Use the Reconnect command, which is available when you select the mailbox in Exchange System Manager. During the reconnect process, select the user who you want to associate with the mailbox.

  • Use Mailbox Recovery Center to recover one or more mailboxes on one or more mailbox stores. You can export the mailbox properties to a file, and you can associate the mailboxes with users in Active Directory and reconnect the mailboxes.

For detailed instructions, see "How to Recover One or More Mailboxes on One or More Mailbox Stores".

For more detailed information about recovering mailboxes, including how to remove the mailbox stores from the Mailbox Recovery Center, see the Exchange Server 2003 Help.