Mailboxes not showing up in Disconnected Mailboxes

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Ever experienced a disconnected mailbox, that doesn’t show up in Disconnected Mailbox, after the mailbox has be disabled or removed ? If you disable a mailbox within the Exchange Management Console or EMS and you for some reason want to reconnect it again, soon after. But are unable to find the disconnected mailbox within Disconnected Mailbox. There is a reason for it, it will show up in Disconnected Mailbox after the nightly maintenance. But it is possible to force this, like it was in Exchange 2003. The documentation for Exchange 2010 tell you otherwise, but it doesn’t always work that way:

The Disable-Mailbox cmdlet also performs the cleanup task on the individual mailbox, so the mailbox is disconnected immediately after this task completes. You don't have to wait for nightly maintenance or run the Clean-MailboxDatabase cmdlet for the mailbox to be disconnected.

But still if it doesn’t show up in the Disconnected Mailbox, you can use the commands listed below. Get an overview of disconnected mailboxes on a certain server with this command:

Get-Mailboxstatistics -Server EXCH-MBX-01 | Where-Object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | FL DisplayName,

LegacyDN,ItemCount,OriginatingServer -wrap

 
Get an overview of disconnected mailboxes on a certain database with this command:
get-mailboxstatistics -database "Mailbox Database" |where{$_.DisconnectDate -ne $null}| FL displayName,LegacyDN,

ItemCount,OriginatingServer -wrap

Clean a certain mailbox database with this command:

Clean-MailboxDatabase "Mailbox Database"

Clean all databases with this command:

Get-MailboxDatabase | Clean-MailboxDatabase

Read more in the Exchange 2010 documentation about Disable-Mailbox.

10 thoughts on “Mailboxes not showing up in Disconnected Mailboxes”

  1. I tried this, when disabling accounts both using EMC and EMS. Disconnected mailboxes just does not show up. Eventlog says 0 disconnected mailboxes found.

    Ran Get-MailboxDatabase | Clean-MailboxDatabase
    No change
    Ran Get-Mailboxstatistics -Server | Where-Object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null }
    Nothing.

    Ad confirms mailbox is disconnected.

    Retention time is default 30

    Tried to replicate issue in my test environment – same issue here. Bug?

    • I have not heard of this as a bug. Have you made sure your server is fully updated ?
      Have you tried to give it some time, after the inital clean ?

  2. I have an issue. Mailboxes are showing in disconnected mailboxes, but when we try to reconnect it to its AD account, it is giving error that it is not located in that particular database.

    EG. Mailbox 1 is showing in DB01 database as disconnected state.
    Trying to connect Mailbox 1 to AD 1, I am getting error as Mailbox 1 is not located at DB01.

    Please help me, it is very urgent.

    Thanks,

    • Sorry, can not do support here in the comment. Either use the Microsoft TechNet forum or you are welcome to contact me on e-mail and I would be happy to consult.

  3. I have one mailbox neither disabled nor soft-deleted, AD user does not exist, mailbox does not appear in EMC but it appears in powershell. AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE IT. I would thank any help.
    Thanks.

  4. Hi, I am having a similar issue. If I run a Get-MailboxStatistics -Database GMP-DAG01-DB1, I get a list of the mailboxes contained therein, and I can do this for every DB I have. However, if I run Get-MailboxDatabase | Get-MailboxStatistics, it states that the specified mailbox doesn’t exist for every one. Any ideas what is happening?

  5. It worked after using Clean-MailboxDatabase “Mailbox Database”
    The mailbox was visible again in disconnected mailboxes and after that I’ve connected to the user.
    Ran Clean-MailboxDatabase “Mailbox Database” again so the mailbox was not in list of disabled mailboxes anymore.

    Wait until Active Directory replication has occurd.

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