Clear down MS Exchamge Mailstore

Nikumba

Nikumba

Nikumba

Soldato
Joined
4 Dec 2002
Posts
3,983
Location
Bourne, Lincs
We have a mailbox database that we need to clear down all the mail in it, but keep all the mailboxes intact. Using Exchange 2010 Sp3

What is the best way to do this?

I have read someone suggested to dismount the mailbox store, delete the files for it, remount it and it will re-create all the mailboxes etc this true?

Any other options?

Thanks

Kimbie
 
You want to wipe all the mailboxes? I guess you could delete the entire databases and create new databases.

Disable all the mailboxes and delete them or let retention remove it automatically. Then create new mailboxes and connect them to the existing AD accounts.
 
There are 250+ accounts, that we need to clear down, but not delete the mailbox as for the time being we need to keep all the exchange forwarding in place
 
You could get trial of email archiving software like Mailstore and just setup a policy to archive all emails for all mailboxes. I'm sure there's archive and delete policy.
 
Last edited:
kind of a strange request. Do they want to keep their calendars and contacts as well?

If its just complete mailboxes they want. I would just disable all the mailboxes in one go with the EMC. Then with the shell create an empty mailbox for every user in one command. Just make sure the smtp address policy is setup as you want the emails to be and that the AD fields are populated with first name/last name.
 
If you dismount the store and delete the files, you will mount an empty database with nothing in it. Is that what you want to do?

Else you could disable all mailboxes (disconnects them) and then enable them (connects an empty one).

Disable-Mailbox -Identity "[email protected]"
Enable-Mailbox -Identity "[email protected]" -Database "DATABASENAME"

This way you can always re-attach the disabled mailboxes within the deleted mailbox retention period.

I think you can also try moving them with -ConfigurationOnly to another mailbox database which should move the homeMDB path and mount an empty mailbox in another DB.

Would recommend testing any method you pick to be sure of it first of all, and worth taking a copy of all user props via CSVDE export first too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom