Recover deleted items is not working

[johnisotank]

Hi all,

could someone help me work out this pls..

In Exchange I have the deletion settings set as 7 days for deleted items.

However, if a user deletes an item and then deletes it permanently from his Deleted items folder it should appear in the list when he selects Tools>Recover Deleted Items?

Nope, the list is totally empty. I have deleted about 10 emails and none of them are recoverable.

is there a setting I have missed somewhere?

Thanks
John

 

[SjrH]

Try adding a new DWORD value of DumpsterAlwaysOn (decimal value of 1) to the registry key HKLM / SOFTWARE / Microsoft / Exchange / Client / Options, on the client computer (not server).

Restart Outlook and try again.

[small]have you turned it off and on again?[/small]

 

[johnisotank]

Hi thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately I have already tried that with no luck.

Last week I was able to populate this, althought not all e-mails were going in there. Today though it seems nothing wants to go in there.

Thanks
John

 

[ShackDaddy]

Here's a likely cause:

When you get properties on your Mailbox database, and you look at your retention settings, there's an option to not delete items until they've been backed up. That option behaves differently than people think: I've seen it allow items to be deleted AS SOON as the backup runs, invalidating the retention times.

Make sure that box is NOT checked, and deleted items will begin to be available for recovery again. But the ones you are trying to restore now may have to be restored from backup!

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[johnisotank]

Hi, thanks for the reply,

I don't (and have never) had that box checked - I did think along the same lines as you but in this case it's not the cause.

Hope I can fix this because it seems like a very useful feature.

thanks
John

 

[zbnet]

Are you up-to-date with your service packs?

 

[johnisotank]

Yes, running Windows Small Business Server 2003 with Exchange SP2

 

[ShackDaddy]

Are you using Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007?

If it's Outlook 2003, try logging into that account with a computer using Outlook 2007 and see if the Recover Deleted Items is populated. If so, then the problem does have something to do with the dumpster value, since Outlook 2003 can't recover permanently deleted items without that DumpsterAlwaysOn created.

I doubt this is a server-side issue, but perhaps if you had the retention set at 0 and then you set it to 7 days, it might not take without restarting the Information Store.

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[johnisotank]

Thanks for the reply, we run Outlook 2003 we don't have any Outlook 2007's at our office so can't test that I'm afraid.

It seems the latter part of last week (when I wasn't taking notice of whether it was working or not) that it has populated some items (mostly folders, a couple of contacts and one e-mail)

 

[58sniper]

The mailboxes haven't been moved to a different database, have they?

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[johnisotank]

during my testing i have moved database location from C drive to D drive, might that be the cause?

 

[58sniper]

That shouldn't be a problem. But when you move a user from one database to another, the related dumpster data is lost for that user.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/