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Deleting and reconnecting Exchange Server 2007 mailboxes

There's a subtle difference between a deleted Exchange Server 2007 mailbox and a disconnected mailbox. Learn how to reconnect a deleted Exchange mailbox.

Published: 19 Nov 2008

This is part 3 from "Creating and managing recipients in Exchange Server 2007," excerpted from Chapter 3 of the book Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: A Beginner's Guide, written by Nick Cavalancia and published by The McGraw-Hill Companies, copyright 2008.
Deleting a mailbox is a rather simple task in Exchange 2007: choose the mailbox, select Remove from the action pane, and it's gone. The opportunity exists, though, to reassociate the "deleted" mailbox (which is actually in a "disconnected" state and won't be deleted immediately) with another existing user account in Active Directory. First, the issue of deleted versus disconnected: Each mailbox database has its own settings on how long to retain deleted mailboxes, as well as a setting on whether to wait for a backup before deleting mailboxes. You can read more on this in Chapter 5.

The process of recovering a mailbox involves selecting the "deleted" mailbox (I put deleted in quotes, as it isn't really deleted until Exchange deems it so) and connecting it to an existing Active Directory user account that currently does not have a mailbox. Figure 3-26 shows the disconnected mailbox object in the Exchange Management Console.


Figure 3-26. Navigating to reconnect mailboxes. (Click on image for enlarged view.)

Selecting the mailbox and choosing Connect from the action pane starts the Connect Mailbox Wizard, shown in Figure 3-27. You can choose the type of mailbox the reconnected mailbox will be. The process is similar to creating a new mailbox, with the only difference being that the mailbox dataset already exists and you need to select the existing user or match it to an alias, as shown in Figure 3-28.


Figure 3-27. Reconnecting via the Connect Mailbox Wizard. (Click on image for enlarged view.)


Figure 3-28. Selecting the existing user in the Connect Mailbox Wizard. (Click on image for enlarged view.)


Tutorial: Creating and managing recipients in Exchange Server 2007

 Home: Introduction to Exchange 2007 recipients
 Part 1: Creating and configuring Exchange Server 2007 mailboxes
 Part 2: How to configure Exchange Server 2007 mailboxes
 Part 3: Deleting and reconnecting Exchange Server 2007 mailboxes
 Part 4: Setting up Exchange Server 2007 contacts
 Part 5: Creating mail users in Exchange Server 2007
 Part 6: How to create and configure Exchange Server 2007 distribution groups
 Part 7: Managing Exchange Server 2007 address lists

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Beginner's Guide This chapter excerpt from Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: A Beginner's Guide, by Nick Cavalancia, is printed with permission from The McGraw-Hill Companies, copyright 2008.

Click here for the chapter download or purchase the book here.

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