When an Exchange 2010 mailbox has been disabled it becomes a disconnected mailbox. Disconnected mailboxes sit in the mailbox database until the configured retention period has lapsed, and then they are purged.
You can see the retention period for a mailbox database by opening it’s properties and looking on the Limits tab.
Exchange 2010 mailbox database retention settings
In the example above a disconnected mailbox will remain in the database for 30 days before it is purged.
Sometimes within the retention period we want to recover the mailbox, for example if it was accidentally disabled or if the staff member returns to the company.
How to List all Disconnected Exchange 2010 Mailboxes
The Exchange Management Shell lets us find the disconnected mailboxes in the organization.
[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Get-MailboxStatistics | where {$_.DisconnectReason -ne $null} | ft displayname,database,disconnectreason -auto
DisplayName Database DisconnectReason
----------- -------- ----------------
Alan Reid MB-HO-01 Disabled
TestMB BR MB-BR-01 SoftDeleted
Aisha Bhari MB-BR-01 SoftDeleted
Notice there are two disconnect reasons shown above.
- Disabled – means the mailbox was disabled
- SoftDeleted – means the mailbox was either removed or moved between databases
Here is an explanation of the difference between removing and disabling a mailbox in Exchange 2010 if you aren’t already familiar with it.
Disconnected mailboxes can be reconnected to an Active Directory user account. If no account exists for the person you want to reconnect a mailbox to then you would first create the account in Active Directory. Then you can reconnect the mailbox.
How to Connect an Exchange 2010 Mailbox to a User Account
To reconnect Alan Reid’s mailbox to his existing Active Directory account we would run this command.
[PS] C:\>Connect-Mailbox -Identity "Alan Reid" -Database MB-HO-01 -User Alan.Reid
However, if the user already has a new mailbox they are using and you wish to restore the disconnected mailbox into that new mailbox then you would use the next method shown here.
How to Restore a Deleted Mailbox to a User’s Mailbox
A soft deleted mailbox needs a different method used. To restore the deleted Aisha Bhari mailbox to the current mailbox for that user we would run this command.
[PS] C:\>New-MailboxRestoreRequest -SourceDatabase MB-BR-01 -SourceStoreMailbox "Aisha Bhari" -TargetMailbox "Aisha Bhari" Name TargetMailbox Status ---- ------------- ------ MailboxRestore exchangeserverpro.net/Company/Users/Branch ... Queued
The request goes into a queue for processing. You can monitor the progress of the request with this command.
[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxRestoreRequest Name TargetMailbox Status ---- ------------- ------ MailboxRestore exchangeserverpro.net/Company/Users/Branch ... Completed
If you’re trying to reconnect a disconnected archive mailbox you may receive an error for the legacy DN not matching. Check out Chris Brown’s post here for the solution.
About Paul Cunningham
I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but you, Sir, are a genious!!! This article and countless others on your site have made working with Exchange 2010 a breeze!! Thank you for all that you do on this site!
Wonder if you can help quickly. I’m trying to restore the contents of a recovered mailbox to a user whose account had to be re-created (someone deleted the account from AD….). When I use your Restore a Deleted Mailbox to a User’s Mailbox instructions, I get an error that says the user “has no archive.” What does that mean and how do I fix that? Thanks!
And to purge the disconnected mailbox use:
Remove-StoreMailbox -database AtoF -Identity “Doe, John” -MailboxState SoftDeleted
and replace the identity with the displayname of the user. This has to be displayname, cant be login name or alias.
You mentioned in article that
■SoftDeleted – means the mailbox was either removed or moved between databases
Is this only apply to Exchange 2010 sp1?
When we Remove a mailbox (using EMC or Remove-mailbox), it is actually marked as “Disabled” instead of SoftDeleted? We running Exchange 2010 SP2.