Help! - Need to recover items from an Exchange public folder

Dreadhead · 12 Jun 2012 at 23:42

Hi,

Running Exchange 2007.

I have had a user delete some calendar entries from our exchange public folder.
Unfortunately the public folder store had 0 days retention policy on deleted items set (now it's set to 30).

I have intact Windows Server backups from the last few days, and have been able to restore the .EDB files without any problems. I understand I will be unable to recover from the public folder store however. Apparently this is not supported by MS.

Is my only hope to mount the mailbox stores on a second server and hook up Outlook to that so that I can export the missing data to PST?

I have looked into EDB to PST conversion tools but they seem expensive at best and possibly fraudulant to boot.

Surely there must be an easy way to recover these calendar entries without wiping out everything since the last backup!

I was wondering if I can mount the recovered EDB as a third mailbox store, but I am unsure how I would hook into that to retrieve the data.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

#Chri5# · 13 Jun 2012 at 07:31

I don't think you can a Recovery Storage Group for Public Folders.

One option would be to re-create an indentical Exchange Server in a sandbox environment, restore your EDBs into that and then extract via Outlook.

As for EDB recovery tools, I know Ontrack PowerControls are legit but not cheap.

anything I don't mind · 14 Jun 2012 at 10:33

There is that little application called pfdavadmin that allows additional public folder administration features that might help. at least make things a bit easier.

BobbyDsl · 6 Jul 2012 at 12:59

Using Lepide Exchange Manager utility ona can discover and recover business-critical Exchange data fastly and accurately. The tool provides various options for searching required Email data from available backup and restores it. Apart from that using this utility one can also restore folders, files and messages even without having available backup.

tribz · 6 Jul 2012 at 13:50

To be honest, it sounds like a lot of work unless the user is pretty high up the food chain.
I'd use this a reason for management to look at getting something that does a granular Exchange backup rather than just a disaster recovery one. Backup Exec is one such option.

Edit, looked at original date of OP post and realised the threads been necro'd. Sorry!