How to Reconnect a Disconnected Mailbox in Exchange Server 2010

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 Limitstab.

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