How To Recover Deleted Items In Exchange Server 2003
Sometimes, administrator deletes mailboxes by mistake. That mailbox can be recovered if within the retention period, default is 30 days. When any mailbox is deleted, Exchange does not delete his emails from its database for a period of 30 days. It actually hides the mailbox an 00004000 d can be recoverable within its retention period. We can reconnect the orphaned mailboxes to a new user.
Exchange Server 2003 supports two type of deletion:
- Soft Delete: It happens when a message is deleted by pressing Delete key and message is saved in the Deleted Items folder.
- Hard Delete: It happens when a message is deleted by pressing Shift and Delete Keys and message is permanently deleted.
Before we proceed, let us remind you that Exchange servers allows us to recover deleted items within 7 days and deleted mailbox within 30 days, by-default. This setting can be modified according to our need. It is worth to understand that in order to be able to increase this limit needs more disk space.
How to check Deletion Setting in Exchange
- Open the Exchange System Manager.
- Expand Servers and your Server.
- Expand First Storage Group.
- Right click on Mailbox Store and open its Properties.
- Click on Limits tab and check Deletion settings > Keep Deleted Items for.
You will see Keep deleted items (for days) = 7 days. This value can be modified according to your company needs.
In some cases, company policies define a different storage limits for special persons, like Presidents or Managers. In this case, we can define different storage limits policies on individual mailboxes. To do so:-
1. Go to Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC).
2. Open the Properties of any user account.
3. Click on Exchange General > Storage Limit tab.
4. Set the Deleted Item Retention settings.
For more detail, click here.
