Forum Discussion
Inadvertently hard deleted a mailbox?
Unfortunately, once you released the hold that was keeping your mailbox in an inactive state, you made it eligible for hard deletion (permanent and irrecoverable removal). It's impossible for Microsoft support to say when a mailbox will disappear because that depends on background processes running on the mailbox server where the active copy of the database holding the mailbox is. I am afraid you are toast. Or rather, your mailbox has made its way to the great byte wastebasket in the sky...
Quick update: turns out MS support was quite useless in this matter. They told me to follow a scripted guide and quite simply if the mailbox was not found in a softdeleted state there was nothing they could do.
May this serve as a hard learned lesson for me, and a heads up for anyone who is reading this in the future..
Unfortunately, once you released the hold that was keeping your mailbox in an inactive state, you made it eligible for hard deletion (permanent and irrecoverable removal). It's impossible for Microsoft support to say when a mailbox will disappear because that depends on background processes running on the mailbox server where the active copy of the database holding the mailbox is. I am afraid you are toast. Or rather, your mailbox has made its way to the great byte wastebasket in the sky...
Thanks Tony.
It´s heartbreaking information for me, but still a much appreciated insight.
Best regards.
- I recommend setting up a preservation policy, so that e-mail stays regardless of deleting users etc. I got mine set for 7 years or what not and is kind of a CYA.