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Exchange 2000 disabling a mailbox\user

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4 replies

by aaron_wurthmann

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Environment: Windows 2000/Exchange 2000, patches for both up to date.
Background: Yesterday we let go of 1/3 of our workforce, today some of the managers need mailbox access to the accounts that are now disabled.

Granted manager same as SELF permissions to mailbox. Mailbox can not be opened by manager. I try to open mail box. I granted myself god like permissions on the Exchange server IS during install. ;) I can not open their mailbox either I get an error that says the that the information store can not locate the mailbox.

So I think to myself "This must be due to the status of the mailbox", so I re-enable the mailbox and change the password to something long and random, expire the account with todays date, set the user must change pass at next log on feature. Tried to open the mailbox and... got the same problems again. I tried about a half an hour later and got the same results.

When I checked an hour later the mailbox was able to be opened. hmmmm....

What am I missing? Why can't I re-enable a mailbox on the fly? Can I speed up whatever process is causing this? Did I even have to re-enable the mailbox? Any light you can shed on this mystery will help me sleep tonight.

4 replies

by curlergirl

Well, bottom line is that you can't do anything about it. It just seems to be a characteristic of Exchange that it takes a while for any changes you make to mailbox permissions and status to take effect. Sometimes it can be immediate; sometimes itcan take 5-15 minutes, sometimes a lot longer. It's very frustrating, and I've never gotten a really adequate explanation of what causes this delay, other than the fact that it must have something to do with the way that Exchange writes informationinto the databases - NOT on the fly at all.

I'm not sure what you mean by "re-enable" the mailbox, but if you had actually marked the mailbox for deletion (which it appears that you probably did), then you definitely would have to re-activate it in order for anyone to be able to access it. Once a mailbox is marked for deletion, even though it isn't actually purged until the retention period has expired, you can't ever open it again unless you re-activate before it's actually purged.

Hopethis helps hold off the "nightmails" ;-)!

by aaron_wurthmann

1000 points just for the pun. LOL!

Anyhow sounds like there is little you can do about this. We tried a few things and were able to speed things up. I forgot the options and or I am too tired at the moment, basically right clicking on the mailboxstore as well as the server and or admin group gives you some options for clean up/scavenging. It is of course unclear whether or not it actually helped. *shrug*

by aaron_wurthmann

>I'm not sure what you mean by "re-enable" the mailbox.
Your right I should have more accurately described that as disabling the user account and re-enabling the user account.

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