When a mailbox is deleted/disabled in the MS Exchange Administration Center (EAC) or via Disable-Mailbox/ Remove-Mailbox cmdlet in the Microsoft Exchange Management Shell, it (Exchange) keeps the disabled mailbox in the database mailbox, & switches the mailbox to a disconnected state. Therefore, those mailboxes that are disabled or deleted are known as disabled or disconnected mailboxes. When any user disables the mailbox, the attributes of Exchange are eliminated from the associated Active Directory of user account. However, the account is retained. In this blog, we will learn that how to reconnect a disconnected mailbox in Exchange Server 2013, but before that let us learn the working we can do with a disabled mailbox.
Task User Can Perform with Disconnected Mailboxes
Users can execute several operations on a mailbox, which is disconnected. This can be done only before it is deleted from the database of mailbox:
- Users can reconnect it to the same user account.
- Connection to different user account is possible. However, that mailbox should not be mail enabled. This means that the user account should not have the mailbox.
- Retrieve it to an account that has an existing mailbox. For instance, in case, the user whose mailbox was removed or deleted has a new mailbox, then another user can regain the disabled mailbox to their latest or mailbox.
- Delete it permanently from the MS Exchange mailbox data.
Method 1: Use EAC for Connecting Disconnected Mailbox in Exchange 2013
The below mentioned procedure will be helpful in knowing that how to restore disconnected mailbox in Exchange 2013. You can even reconnect disabled linked mailboxes & disabled shared mailboxes to the associated user account.
- Firstly, in the EAC, go to Recipients>>Mailboxes
- Now, click on More, which is followed by the click on Connect a mailbox. A list will come up of all the mailboxes that are not connected on the chosen Exchange Server
Note: This list includes deleted mailboxes, soft-deleted mailboxes, and disabled mailboxes.
- After this, click on that disabled mailbox, which you desire to reconnect, & then click on Connect
- A window will pops up asking that if you are sure to add or reconnect the mailbox, click on Yes.
With this final step, Microsoft Exchange Server will reconnect the disconnected mailbox to the corresponding account of user.
Method 2: Connect disconnected mailbox Exchange 2013 Powershell
Connect disconnected mailbox Exchange 2013 Powershell
In this method, use Connect- Mailbox cmdlt in the Shell for connecting user account to the disabled mailbox. In this procedure, you need to specify type mailbox, which you want to connect. Consider the example as shown below for reconnecting user, shared, and linked mailboxes.
- First, we have taken the example to connect a user mailbox. Here,
Identity: This indicates the disconnected mailbox in MS Exchange database
User: This indicates the Active Directory of user account to connect once again the mailbox to.
Connect-Mailbox -Identity "Texting" -Database MBDA-02 -User "Texting"
- Now, in this is an example to connect a linked mailbox. Here,
LinkedMasterAccount: This specifies the Active Directory user account, which is in the account forest that you need to reconnect the mailbox to.
Alias: This parameter indicates the part of the email address, which is on the left side of the @sys. This is for the reconnected mailbox.
Connect-Mailbox -Identity "Texting" -Database MBDA-02 -LinkedDomainController abc02 -LinkedMasterAccount xyz.cal@abc.com -Alias Texting
- This example shows the reconnection of a shared mailbox.
Connect-Mailbox -Identity "Shared Mailbox" -Database "Mailbox Database 05" -User " Shared Mailbox -Alias shared -Shared
Method 3: Connect disconnected mailbox using Best Tool
Users can opt for an outstanding utility, namely Exchange EDB Recovery Software. This tool is capable to refresh disconnected mailbox in exchange 2013. In fact, it can recover the mailbox from all the available versions of Exchange Server. It maintains the folder hierarchy throughout the whole process, can recover any file without any file size limitation, and supports all the versions of Windows Operating system.
Conclusion:
It is possible that once user disabled the mailbox now want to connect it once again for some use, therefore in this scenario they look for a method for reconnecting a disconnected mailbox in Exchange 2013. Considering this, we have discussed two manual methods along with an expert solution.
