I am often approached by clients on Exchange’s singel item recovery feature. Without tools you can only configure the single item recovery feature PowerShell. This article will provide an overview of the necessary steps.
Activation in Exchange 2010
Activate single-item-recovery for all users
get-mailbox -RecipientType ‘UserMailbox’ | Set-Mailbox -SingleItemRecoveryEnabled $true
Set the deleted-item retention for all databases to 30 days
Get-MailboxDatabase | Set-MailboxDatabase -DeletedItemRetention 30
Fetch deleted-item retention, database and server
Get-MailboxDatabase | ft name, server, deleteditemretention
Get an overview about mailbox, logon, size, deleted items filtered by city Hamburg
get-recipient -RecipientType ‘UserMailbox’ -Filter ‘((City -like ”Hamburg”))’ | Get-MailboxStatistics | ft DisplayName,LastLogonTime,LastLogoffTime,TotalItemSize,DeletedItemCount
Recovery
Recover deleted items from user mailboxes
Mailbox export request
New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox “Discovery Search Mailbox” -SourceRootFolder “Folder of deleted Mail” -ContentFilter {Subject -eq “Subject of deleted Mail”} -FilePath \\FileServerName\C$\ExchangeRecovery\RecoveredMails.pst
If you got an error message that the command Search-Mailbox does not exist, simply close and reopen the Exchange Management shell
Import the messages to the user’s mailbox, use the following command:
New-MailboxImportRequest -Mailbox “Username” -TargetRootFolder “Recovered by Admin” -FilePath \\FileServerName\C$\ExchangeRecovery\RecoveredMails.pst
In the Exchange Management Shell, enter the following command:
Search-Mailbox “Discovery Search Mailbox” -SearchQuery “from:’Username’ AND Subject of deleted Mail” -TargetMailbox “Username” -TargetFolder “Recovered by Admin” -LogLevel Full -DeleteContent
Switch back to the client workstation and check if the message has disappeared from the Discovery Search Mailbox.
Open Outlook and review the new folders from the recovery processes.
Cheers,
Chris
