When an Exchange 2007 mailbox is disabled (either from the GUI or Powershell), how long does it take for the mailbox to appear in the "Disconnected Mailbox" container? Is there any way to expidite the process? If you want the full story of why I ask, we had a user's whose mailbox seemingly has disappeared. Due to automated processes we have in place, a new mailbox was created for her - thus causing her to report that all of her mail and appointments have disappeared. This all seemingly happened today and as of yet I haven't been able to locate her original mailbox, which I would expect to be in the "Disconnected Mailbox" container. My best guess is that the mailbox will be placed in the Disconnected Mailbox container during the nightly database maintenance, but I haven't seen a definite answer saying as much - thus this post. Thanks.

Hi there, did you ever figure out how to get the deleted mailboxes to appear? I have manually removed exchange users in Exchange 2007 GUI but wanted to link them back to another user. I did manage to reconnect but by using the power shell method instead. As a test I have created another mailbox, deleted it and still hasn't apeared in disconnected mailbox list.

It'll takelonger than your users will tolerate! Another 'less than shiny' feature. After having some of my execs mailboxes show up as 'linked' mailboxes incorrectly when they were migrated to Exch'07 I followed the process of 'disabling' the mailbox using Powerhell at which point it disappeared completely....I dunno about your situation but my execs aren't inclined to wait around with no mailbox....in fact it's a CLM (career limiting move) so we went into scramble mode. Thanks to some nice guy on this forum, there is a Powerhell command 'Clean-mailboxdatabase <yourmaildatabase> which caused themailbox to suddenly appear in 'disconnected mailbox' in the ESM and allowed the user to be reconnected to it. Another thing to add to my ever growing list of commands to keep handy. Rob

You can also force the deleted mailboxes to be cleaned up via the Disconnected Mailboxes container in the Recipients Container in the Exchange Management Console.

Thanks, "clean-mailboxdatabase" did the trick! Got a good laugh out of the CLM comment as well.