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Spen815
5 pts.
 Recover lost email months ago in Outlook 2007 w/Exchange 2007 sp1
Exchange 2007 administration, Exchange 2007 backup, Exchange 2007 SP1, Outlook 2007
I am using Exchange 2007 SP1 w/Outlook 2007 SP2. I had a user delete several important emails that he had stored in his subfolder labeled "Saved" in the inbox. He accidentally deleted this folder and all emails inside. Unfortunately he didn't bring this to my attention until several months later. Our current deleted emails in Exchange is set to 7 days retention. I realize the recover email option is available in TOOLS under Deleted Items would no longer hold these deleted emails as they have been deleted several months ago. My question: If I have not performed a database defrag on the exchange server for over 1 year, and restore from backup was not an option. Is it still possible to go into the database of Exchange and recover this folder and contents? Please help Desperate

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ASKED: June 14, 2009  7:54 AM
UPDATED: November 27, 2011  12:14 PM
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Unfortunatley, since Exchange performs online defrags your information is no longer available unless the backup was an option to restore from. After several months, this protection is normally available only with tape backups, or D2D (Disk to Disk) if configured on your backup application.
Last Wiki Answer Submitted:  June 15, 2009  3:53 pm  by  Aguacer0   8,120 pts.
All Answer Wiki Contributors:  Aguacer0   8,120 pts.
To see all answers submitted to the Answer Wiki: View Answer History.


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If you are not doing backups then you need to seriously review your backup policy. Laws are in place which require a corporation to present email if an investigation is required by law. Sometimes mail from as far back as 5 years is requested during a discovery inquiry. To protect your company from lawsuits for not being able to produce email I would bring your backup policies up to date and keep them current starting immediately.

Technochic
 56,975 pts.
 

I am IT veteran but new to Exchange and have two probably very easy questions about this and then maybe a tougher one…1) Where do you set the “current deleted emails” that Spen815 is referring to is set to 7 days? 2) What are you both talking about when you say Exchange defrags? and then 3) I am making a nightly bkf file of my entire Exchange environment with the purpose of being able to restore emails if needed. Can anybody point me to a resource that describes the process of actually using this BKF file to do a restore of an email? (specifically without impacting the live/production (working) email that others are enjoying? (the scenario I’m describing is one where I have a person that wipes their email out (maybe one, maybe a few, maybe all) and I need to restore their OST, but I don’t want to bring down my entire building to do it.

LostNconfusD
 10 pts.
 

Some exchange recovery tools can recover deleted mails, but for the case that the mails have been deleted several months ago, I am not sure whether these tools can help to recover them, you may have a try.
Detailed information about exchange recovery tools: http://www.datanumen.com/aexr/problems/exchange-deleted.htm
Julie

Julie178
 125 pts.