Is there any way to search for Orphaned mailboxes in an Exchange 2000 / 2003 site?
I am working in a site that has 35 Exchange servers, typically with 4 storage groups and 4 stores per server (total of 16 mailbox stores times 35 servers = 560 mailbox stores). Due to accout replication from mainframe to AD, about twice a week, a user account gets deleted and re-created, thus orphaning the mailbox. All that needs to be done is to reassociate the new account with the orphaned mailbox, BUT there is no way to see which server or store the mailbox was on before it was disconnected from the user account, so I presently have to manually browse through all 560 stores looking for a specific orphaned mailbox
So, I'm looking for a way to search through every server / store within an Exchange site for all orphaned mailboxes. If I could get a list of all orphans and their respective mailbox stores, that would be fine. It would be even better if I could search for a specific mailbox or display name, but beggers can't be choosers.
Does anybody know of any built-in or third-party tools that will perform the above search. I really don't care to continue browsing through all 560 stores looking for a single needle in a haystack.
Thanks,
Pete
Software/Hardware used:
Software/Hardware used:
ASKED:
August 1, 2008 5:31 PM
UPDATED:
October 10, 2008 10:43 AM
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Answer Wiki:
Hi,
Here is a website with instructions for this...
http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Recovering_Lost_Mailboxes.html
To see all answers submitted to the Answer Wiki: View Answer History.
Quest Message Stats can run reports on disabled mailboxes and just about anything else you want to know from the exchange stores. Read about it on http://www.quest.com . Select products in the upper left-hand corner and select all products A-Z from the drop down, and choose MessageStats.
I appeciate the answers. The main question is not HOW to reconnect orphaned mailboxes, but how to LOCATE the store where the orphaned mailbox is located for user x.
Example. BOB’s account was “accidentally” deleted, thus orphaning his mailbox. Now at this point, the orphaned mailbox is sitting somewhere in one of 560 mail stores in the enterprise.
I know the name of Bob’s old user account, but it no longer exists and therefore is not searchable through AD Users and Computers, and therefore there is no pointer to where his mailbox was / is still located in an orphaned state. So, when a new BOB account is created, I want an easy way to find the store where the orphaned mailbox is still located so that I can re-attach it to the new account (which is the easy part).
So, to reitterate, the question is, without manually browsing through all 560 stores (about a 4 to 5-hour task) looking for a specific orphaned mailbox, does anyone know of a search tool that will just find it (or at least just list all orphaned mailboxes) within the scope of all mail stores within the site?.
It doesn’t seem like that difficult of a search algorithm, providing MS or some 3rd party had the foresight to create such a search / tool.
Quest Mesage State is indeed a great application and I’ve used it in other environments (though I’ve never queried for orphaned mailboxes before). Unfortunately both the price and the footprint make it prohibitive in this particular envieonment, which is a large company with very tight purse and configuration strings.
Any other apps you can think of? I’d even consider a shareware or freeware app if it could perform the query.
If you search by database name in the Message recovery centre it will return a list of all orphaned mailboxes, as long as you know the mailbox/user name you can find your missing mailbox.