Restoring an Exchange Mailbox with EV Archived emails back to original state.

[sixarm]

Hi,

I'm hoping that this is going to be fairly straight forward, but it's not something that I've ever had to do before.

We're running Exchange 2010 with EV 9.0 (Version: 9.0.2.1061 in About EV). What I need to do is backup an entire Exchange Mailbox to PST, delete the Mailbox from Exchange, delete the User from AD, then setup a new AD User with a fresh new Mailbox and then Import the PST items back into the new fresh Mailbox. All sounds very easy, however the user has emails that have been archived by EV, so I'm not sure of the steps on that side.

Firstly, how can I restore the items that have been archived to EV back to their original state within the Exchange Mailbox? This will then allow me to create the PST.

Secondly, once the emails within the PST have been imported back into the new Mailbox should I then just let EV do its thing and archive the emails as if it were a new mailbox, or should I 'attach' the old EV Mailbox archive to the new Exchange Mailbox?

If any further details are required please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[TonySterling · Accepted solution]

So two options for you that I can see.

1. Use Export Archive to restore the Archive back to the mailbox, then you can disable the user from archiving and delete the archive. Then you can re-enable the user and assign a new archive.  You will need to know that items you restored will not be archived until the modified date reaches the age in your policy unless you use the IgnoreEVDates registry key.  See:

How to export archived items

Basically, open the Enterprise Vault Console, right click on Archives then choose Export . The Export wizard will open.

Disabling archiving for mailboxes

2. Disable the user, export the shortcuts from the mailbox to the PST, then enable the user and associate them with the existing archive.  That should give the new user permission on the archive and allow them to open shortcuts with no problems.

[sixarm]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for the rapid response.

I went for Option 1 in the end and can happily report that it was all successful.

I didn't realise how simple it was to return a mailbox back to it's 'non-archived' state.

[Prone2Typos]

hey Sixarm

I know this is closed with Tony's solution (if you can find a second to flag him as providing the solution it would be appreiciated) but I wanted to throw this up there for consideration in case anyone else reads this.

I do not believe it was necessary to restore the EV content back to the mailbox. After disabling the current mailbox for archiving you could have retainied the archived content... moved the entire contents of the Exchange mailbox to PST... Deleted the account, Created a new one, and upon enabling.... you should have been able to associate the new mailbox with the old archive.

I do not see what issue you would have had in doing this as the shortcuts would have all been assocaited to the new mailbox. There may be some shortcut processing mayham while EV sorts out the differnces (to EV) in the folder IDs and such... but all in all I think this shoudl have worked.

Regardless I am glad you got it sorted and hope you flag it as such to prevent people from trying to help where it is no longer needed.

Regards

[TonySterling]

Hey Typo,

You know, I totally spaced out on that one!  You are right, exporting the shortcuts with the rest of the mailbox and then moving them in the new mailbox and associating the mailbox with the old archive should work.

I guess I just focused in the part of getting all the original items to a pst. 

Thanks for added that part!  :)

Regards,

[sixarm]

That sounds like the easiest option. If this comes up again I shall give it a go.

Thanks both. :)

[Prone2Typos]

no worries... I hope it helps in the future and thanks for closing out this issue.

Also Tony.. .I think you are permitted a pass every now and again for all the solutions you provide. I have no idea how you guys stay on top of this all the time but it is impressive.... thanks for all your help to everyone all the time.