Question

Exchange Mailbox Activity

Asked by: patrickdelosreyes

Hello, we wanted to delete mailboxes on our exchange server... but how do we know if it was inactive for a few months already?

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Asked On
2008-05-30 at 10:18:49ID23445311
Tags

Microsoft

,

Exchange 2003

Topic

Exchange Email Server

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: blackemailPosted on 2008-05-30 at 10:57:46ID: 21679981

You could write a script or for a simple solution, just do the following.  Open Exchange System Manager, expand the Storage Group, Expand the mailbox store.  Click on Mailboxes.  You should see a 'Last Logon Time' Column.  Right Click on Mailboxes and select export list.  Export as a Tab Delimited text file (using a CSV will not work as any name with a comma will skew the columns).  Import the text file into excel and sort by the last logon time.  You will need to do this for each mailbox store but if you only have a few servers it is the quickest way.  

 

by: jaguarpriestPosted on 2008-05-30 at 11:05:21ID: 21680038

You can also look at the event logs to see the last time the associated user has been logged into the the system. To get organized you could create a type of "Dormant/disalbed" information store to move these inactive accounts. You can then monitor it for a while and eventually purge the mailboxes out of this database. It is a clean way to seperate your active users against your inactive/disabled users. This will in turn reduce the amount of data being backed up and your "Disalbed/inactive" user databse can be backed up less frequently.

 

by: patrickdelosreyesPosted on 2008-05-30 at 11:17:33ID: 21680148

ok how do i do that? you have a link of steps i can follow? thank you :)

 

by: jaguarpriestPosted on 2008-05-30 at 12:33:59ID: 21680748

I'm sorry for not being to clear. THis is a two part process, the identification then Isolation. To start simple, i would follow with mr. "blackemail's" comments about initial identification of when the last time the actual user may be logged into the mailbox. I would then right click on the "Storage Group" of your server and create a new "Mailbox Store".  I would place this preferably on another drive and if not possible at least a seperate folder. Once created I'd gather all those users who's hasn't logged into the MB in a long time and move them to this new mailbox store. I would also suggest to rename the actual store in ESM (Exchange System Manager) to something like "Archive - Disabled User Store" . Something that would identify it to other administrators as a place NOT to put active users.  Then monitor for changes and delete the user via ADUC as needed, then purge out of the Mailbox Store.

Hope this helps :)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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