Delete Exchange Emails and Objects by Mistake:

If you delete an email or other object in Exchange mailbox, by clicking the “Del” button, then it will be moved to the “Deleted Items” folder. You can restore it by simply switching to the “Deleted Items” folder, finding the email or object you want, and moving it back to its original location or other normal folders.

However, if you delete an Exchange object under the three circumstances listed below, then it is erased permanently:

  • Use the hard-delete command (Shift+Del). This will delete the object directly, bypassing the “Deleted Items” folder or the Deleted Items Cache when it is not enabled.
  • Delete from the “Deleted Items” folder.
  • Delete a mailbox or an Exchange server instance with the MS Exchange Administrator.

Even if the object is deleted permanently, you may still be able to recover it from the offline folder (.ost) file corresponding to the Exchange mailbox, as the OST file is an offline copy of the mailbox contents on the server. And there are two situations:

  • You haven’t synchronized the OST file with the server. In that case, the object deleted from the server still exists in the OST file normally.
  • You have synchronized the OST file with the server. In that case, the object deleted from the server will also be removed from the OST file.

For either situation, you can use DataNumen Exchange Recovery to recover the deleted object from the OST file. But for different situations, you may expect to get the undeleted object from different locations.

Using DataNumen Exchange Recovery to Undelete Permanently Deleted Exchange Objects:

Please do as follows to recover permanently deleted Exchange objects with DataNumen Exchange Recovery:

  1. On your local computer, find the OST file corresponding to the Exchange mailbox where you want to undelete objects. You can determine the file location based on its property displayed in Outlook. Or use the Search function in Windows to search it. Or search in several predefined locations.
  2. Close Outlook and any other application that may access the OST file.
  3. Start DataNumen Exchange Recovery.
  4. Select the OST file found in step 1 as the source OST file to be recovered.
  5. Set the output fixed PST file name if necessary.
  6. Click “Start Recover” button to recover the source OST file. DataNumen Exchange Recovery will scan and recover the deleted objects in the source OST file, and save them into a new Outlook PST file whose name is specified in step 5.
  7. After the recovery process, you can use Microsoft Outlook to open the output fixed PST file and get the undeleted objects. If you haven’t synchronized the OST file with the server, then you can find the undeleted objects in their original locations. However, if you have already synchronized the OST file, then you can find the undeleted objects in the locations where they are permanently deleted. For example, if you use “Shift+Del” button to permanently delete an email from “Inbox” folder, then DataNumen Exchange Recovery will restore it back to the “Inbox” folder after the recovery process. If you use “Del” button to delete this email from “Inbox” folder, and then permanently delete it from the “Deleted Items” folder, then after the recovery, it will be restored to “Deleted Items” folder.

Note: You may find duplicate undeleted objects in the “Recovered_Groupxxx” folders. Please just ignore them. Because sometimes when you remove an object from your Exchange mailbox and synchronize it with the OST file, Outlook will make some duplicate copies implicitly. DataNumen Exchange Recovery is so powerful that it can recover all these implicit copies as well and treat them as lost & found items, which are recovered and put in folders called “Recovered_Groupxxx” in the output fixed PST file.