Disconnecting an Exchange Mailbox

Here's how to disconnect a mailbox from a Windows account:

1. Go to the Exchange 2007 Exchange Management Console - Left Pane -> Recipient Configuration -> Mailbox
   
   
2. Go to Actions on the right pane -> Find...; type the UserID (or Last Name) or the Windows account.
   


3. Select the user (by Display Name, Alias), right click -> Disable -> Yes.  (Note:  Do NOT select Remove for this will remove the Windows account object).
   
   
   
   
4. Wait for your actions to take effect as it propagate across the Domain.
   
   
   

Reconnecting a disconnected Exchange Mailbox

Here's how to reconnect a disconnected mailbox to a Windows account:

1. Go to the Exchange 2007 Exchange Management Console - Left Pane -> Recipient Configuration -> Disconnected Mailbox, right click -> connect to server...
   
   
2. Click on the Browse... button, select Exchcluster1-0x (in this case, server housing UserID of disconnected mailbox) -> connect.
   
   
3. As list of disconnected mailboxes (w/o owners) will appear in the middle pane.
   
   Note: If the disconnected mailbox you're looking for does not show up, you can either wait for the mailbox cleanup process to run over night or you may force (Cleanup Agent) to run via PowerShell.  For the latter, you would have to know the location of the original user's mailbox (CMS server, StorageGroup, DB).  EMS command is:
   
   [PS] C:\>Clean-mailboxdatabase "EXCHCLUSTER1-0x\SGx\DB-xx"
   
   
4. Add a column into you view for LegacyDN to be sure that's the right user you want to reconnect.
   
   
5. Right click on the User (Display Name) -> Connect...
   
   
6. The Connect Mailbox dialog box will appear.  Select "User Mailbox" (default) ->next.  Select "Existing user" -> browse.
   
   
7. Enter the new UserID (to reconnect) in the Search box -> Find Now -> If valid (You may use ADU&C MMC to verify the correct user/account before proceeding) -> OK.
   
   
8. Verify the Exchange Alias to make sure it's correct.  
   
   
9. Select "Exchange ActiveSync mailbox policy, Browse, select Default, OK.
   
   
10. Next -> Connect.  Wait for the operation to complete successfully.
    
    
11. Be aware of default quota limits.  When you remap a disconnected mailbox, it'll inherent the defaults quota limits (2GB) so you may need to increase quotas right away if the original mailbox size was larger than 2GB.  When this happens the reconnected mailbox will go into "StorageLimitStatus : MailboxDisabled" condition until the changes propagate across the domain, which may take a while.  The default interval for refreshing the cached mailbox information is 2 hours.
    In situations (not-common) where you have to force a reset, you may run the "Clean-mailboxdatase" powershell command again:
    
    [PS] C:\>Clean-mailboxdatabase "EXCHCLUSTER1-0x\SGx\DB-xx"
    
    To verify a sucessful reset:
    
    [PS] C:\>Get-MailboxStatistics User_ID | fl    (Notice the "StorageLimitStatus : BelowLimit" should be set now)
    
    
12. Under normal situations, wait for Active Directory Replication to occur before notifying Account Services.

 

Reconnecting a disconnected Exchange Resource (room or equipment) Mailbox

1. Recreate deleted user account in RES if you already deleted that account
   
   
2. Recreate AD user account (same name as deleted account) in the following location: win.slac.stanford.edu/SCS/Conference-Rooms
   
   • When creating account, set Full Name as same as User Logon Name.  You can change Full Name/ Display Name later on.
     
     
3. Follow the instruction above "Reconnecting a disconnected Exchange Mailbox"
   
   
4. Wait for AD replication to make sure user account is Exchange enabled (i.e. email address of the user should have been populated after replication)
   
   
5. What we now have is a user mailbox with resource information still intact (i.e. appts., meeting requests, approvals).  We need to convert this to a room/equipment mailbox type.
   
   
6. From EMC: set-mailbox user_ID -Type Room  (This will convert from UserMailbox type to RoomMailbox type)
   
   • i.e. Set-mailbox meetroomtst1 -Type Room
     
     
7. For Equipment Mailbox uses -Type   Equipment
   
   
8. To check the status of the conversion, please use get-mailbox user_ID | select-object recipienttype* (RecipientTypeDetails shoud be RoomMailbox)
   
   
9. At this point user account in the AD should have been disabled since it is becoming a resource mailbox which doesn't need an active user account to associate with it.
   
   • You can confirm this by using ADUAC MMC
     
     
10. You can now correct the Displayname back to what is was before on the account.
    
    
11. You should also check mailboxcalendar permission by right clicking on the resource mailbox, select Manage Full Access Permission and view the ACL entries
    
    • If this a room mailbox, you should see SLAC\ExchCalAdmin as one of the entries along with NT AUTHORITY\SELF
      
    • Or you can compare with existing room mailbox to make sure permissions are in place correctly
      
      
12. You can open up a shared calendar from Outlook and check permissions (owner(s), delegates(s)) to make sure they are there.  If not, contact responsible party and reassign these permission.
    
    
13. I found that when room mailbox is still intact (deleted but still available to reconnect), room mailbox's contents, calendar permissions, and mailbox's permissions are retained as prior.  Converting mailbox from one type to the other doesn't alter any of those above.