Administrator unable to access mailbox of disabled user account...

[infernon]

I've looked high and low for a solution to this one and I've found nothing. I've done a search, through this forum as well, but nothing seems to address this problem head-on.
I have a user who left the company. I need to access his mailbox. The administrator account is a member of Enterprise, Admins, Domain Admins, etc.
Via ADUC, I've checked permissions on the mailbox of the disabled user. Send As, Receive As and Full Mailbox Access permissions have all been granted specifically to the domain admin account/group/whatever (all permissions have been assigned with the exception of 'Associated External Account' as an error message appears when I attempt to grant that permission).
The Self account has been added and and granted all permissions including 'Associated External Account'.
I'm going nuts over this. Any help that anyone could offer would be greatly appreciatedld offer would be greatly appreciated I seriously think that I'm missing something here and know that I'll slap myself when I come to realization...

 

[NortonES2]

Try removing the Exchange Attributes from this user, enabling their account re-connect the mailbox to their account and then changeing the attributes. Then remove the Exchange attributes again, disable their account and re-connect the mailbox. Allow time for the different stages to replicate via AD.

The problem seems to arise when an AD account is disabled while still having Exchange attributes set.

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If it doesn't leak oil it must be empty!!

 

[xmsre]

Try adding "self" to the permissons of the disabled account, then check the "Associated External Account" box.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;278966

 

[infernon]

it seems the the self account worked when i added it yesterday, but i was impatient and didnt' want to wait for AD to replicate. thanks for the help!!!