How to reconnect a disabled mailbox in Exchange 2007
Today, I needed to reconnect a mailbox from a temp user to the final one, but it can be used as an emergency rescue procedure if we disable a mailbox accidentally.
When we disable a mailbox in Exchange Server 2007 we are removing the exchange attributes of this mailbox, but the user remains in Active Directory.
To disable a mailbox you should:
- Open Exchange Management Console
- Expand Recipient Configuration
- Click on Mailbox
- Choose a mailbox and click on Disable in the Actions pane.
- On the Microsoft Exchange page, a new message dialog box will appear asking if we really want to disable that user, click on Yes to continue.
Usually, mailboxes don’t appear as disconnected until the mailbox maintenance is done overnight. But you can force it with this easy trick:
-
Open Exchange Management Shell
-
Run cmdlet:
clean-mailboxdatabase <servername\databasename>
Now we will check the disconnected mailboxes out and connect them, as shown below (First of all, we should create the new user in Active Directory Users and Computers):
- Open Exchange Management Console
- Expand Recipient Configuration
- Click on Disconnected Mailbox
- We will see all the disconnected mailboxes in the work panel. Select the disconnected user, and click on Reconnect in the Actions pane.
- Introduction. On the Introduction page, select User Mailbox and then click Next to continue.
- Choose existing user and finish. The old mailbox is now associated with the old username.
- Now the new user can log on to his/her mailbox and check for all the content that belonged to its removed or disabled user object.
More information: