Importing disconnected mailboxes from Exchange?

[Anon_Man]

Hi

I thought I'd asked this question previously, but can't seem to find any trace of the post.

We have hundreds, it not thousands of disconnected mailboxes in Exchange.  For whatever reason, the leaver's process hasn't always been followed and the zero day archiving policy hasn't been applied before the AD account has been deleted.

The retention on these disconnected mailboxes is set at 10 years in Exchange.

Ideally I'd like to either :

- Import into Enterprise Vault, for which an EV archive already exists.
- If the above isn't possible, move these disconnected mailboxes to a non-production Exchange server.

As far as I can see either option above means recreating an AD account for each mailbox and then reconnecting the mailbox.
I'm not keen on this solution as it takes some time to do, and it also makes these mailboxes live and 'visible' to the rest of the organisation as live users.

Or is there some other solution I haven't considered?

Thanks!

[Rob_Wilcox1]

There are registry keys on the EV side that can archive disabled mailboxes....

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH76587

Do they help? Have you tried those?

[Anon_Man]

Thanks Rob, but that's for when the AD account is disabled.

In this case the AD account has been deleted and the Exchange mailboxes are in a disconnected state.
 

[VirgilDobos]

Hi Anon,

You will have to set the set the MbxExchangeState to 0 (Normal) in the Directory database for the deleted malboxes you want to archive, then run the archiving against those mailboxes. 

Eventually you can create a small SQL query to change the state from 2 (Deleted) to 0 for all the users where MbxExchangeState = 2, then run archiving to archive everything from those mailboxes.

Have a look on this article: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/mbx-archiving-state-mbx-exchange-state

Also, have a look at this one:

Article:TECH35574

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Created: 2004-01-19

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Updated: 2011-09-12

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Article URL http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH35574

PS: Remember not to run the Provisioning tasks as it will automatically update MbxExchangeState.

Let me know if this helps.

[Elio_C]

Hi,

Did you figure something out for this?

From an Exchange point of view you could batch up a few powershell commands to connect and hide the mailboxes.

Then use the EV registry changes to allow archiving of disabled and hidden mailboxes.

[Anon_Man]

Hi EC at TW - no, I'm afraid not, it doesn't look like it's possible.

As you say, we can continue to script the reconnection to new AD accounts as far as that's possible, but it's still labour-intensive, clunky and far from an ideal situation.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions though.

[VirgilDobos]

Hi Anon,

Can you please mark the most relevant post as a 'solution' please?

Cheers, Virgil

[Anon_Man]

Hi Virgil - well, not sure what to do as there isn't really a post that is a solution.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

If it were me, I would:

- Export the mailboxes to PST using Exchange tools...

- Import them into EV.

Then.. for all new leavers, implement a process which will involve 'not' disconnecting the Exchange mailbox.

[Anon_Man]

Hi Rob

You can't export a disconnected mailbox to PST in Exchange.

You first have to create AD accounts, link the mailbox to the AD account etc etc, which is what I'm already doing and trying to avoid.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

Okay.

If nothing MAPI related can connect to them ... then there is nothing that can be done :(

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

you're running in to a wall with Exchange and the way mailbox objects work. there's nothing you can do with the data until you connect it to a new or existing user account in AD