I was troubleshooting why there were warnings about failing backups about two mail boxes in Exchange 2010. I found out that the two mail boxes belonged to two old employees, who left the company about 6 months ago. Their mailboxes seem to still be in the Mailbox database. They can be found with Get-MailboxStatistics, but not with any other cmdlet and not in EMC. The mailboxes are not "disconnected" nor "SoftDeleted" and they won't show up in "Disconnected Mailboxes" in EMC despite issuing "Clean-MailboxDatabase" cmdlet. The mailboxes can't be deleted, because the mailbox id is not found by EMS, even though Get-MailboxDatabase shows the ID very well. The mailboxes can't be connected to another user; EMS reports that they are already connected to a user. There are still their old, disabled AD accounts in the domain. I enabled the accounts and tried all the above again with no success. How do I remove these two mailboxes? Output of Get-MailboxStatistics for the first of the troublesome mailboxes: RunspaceId : 29eea8b1-c034-4b07-81e9-8c8aeb1908e1 AssociatedItemCount : 208 DeletedItemCount : 1 DisconnectDate : DisconnectReason : DisplayName : Surname Firstname ItemCount : 58502 LastLoggedOnUserAccount : DOMAIN\another.user LastLogoffTime : 3/8/2011 10:20:24 AM LastLogonTime : 3/8/2011 10:17:48 AM LegacyDN : /O=ORG/OU=FIRST ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=FIRSTNAME.SURNAME MailboxGuid : 8e2d33bb-de3b-4436-bb4e-c9ac6d6c9a80 ObjectClass : Mailbox StorageLimitStatus : NoChecking TotalDeletedItemSize : 41.05 KB (42,034 bytes) TotalItemSize : 5.63 GB (6,045,595,225 bytes) MailboxTableIdentifier : 29F0-607E33 Database : Mailbox Database 1291343856 ServerName : EXCHANGE2010 DatabaseName : Mailbox Database 1291343856 MoveHistory : IsQuarantined : False IsArchiveMailbox : False Identity : 8e2d33bb-de3b-4436-bb4e-c9ac6d6c9a80 MapiIdentity : 8e2d33bb-de3b-4436-bb4e-c9ac6d6c9a80 OriginatingServer : exchange2010.org.local IsValid : True

Hi, Did you tried to delete the corresponding entries from ADSIEDIT.MSC?Regards from www.windowsadmin.info

Hello, I can't delete the AD user object due to other reasons, but I found out in adsiedit that the troublesome mailboxes have a bunch of (exchange related) attributes that other old, disabled accounts do not have. Can anyone confirm, are they excatly these attributes that have to be removed from the AD user object to release the mailbox for deletion? homeMDB legacyExchangeDN msExchHomeServername msExchMailboxGuid msExchMailboxMoveSourceMDBLink msExchMailboxMoveTargetMDBLink msExchMailboxSecurityDescriptor msExchRBACPolicyLink msExchUserAccountControl msExchVersion proxyAddress showInAddressBook testEncodedORAddress userCertificate

So what happens when you try to disable the mailbox via EMS? (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997210.aspx_ Disable-Mailbox - Use the identity switch.Sukh

Hello, Sukh828, the disable-mailbox could not find the mailbox, I tried many possible identifiers as input. But ManU PhiliP's advice led me to the direction. I removed the attributes I mentioned above, did Clean-MailboxDatabase, found the two mailboxes in "Disconnected Mailboxes" in EMC and finally I was able to Remove-Mailbox with using the -StoreMailboxIdentity switch. Problem solved. Thank you all and especially PhiliP!