Recover a message deleted in OWA with a hard delete
Wednesday, November 08, 2006 10:26 AM
If a user asks if you can recover a message deleted with a hard delete, here's what to do.
Try this on an unimportant message in OWA: Hold down the shift key and hit the Delete key on the keyboard. OWA will pop up a window and ask you if you want to permanently delete the item.
In short, answering in the affirmative results in the message being deleted and bypassing the Deleted Items folder. While the Shift-Delete trick isn't exactly intuitive, more than a few users know how to use it... and they do. Eventually, one of said users will ring up the help desk and ask the inevitable: "Is there any way that I can get that message back... now?"
Fortunately, there is! You can do it by using OWA to view the deleted items recovery cache that is available for each folder. To view the cache for a particular folder, use the following URL:
http://OWA_server/exchange/mailbox/folder/?cmd=showdeleted
For example, suppose your OWA server is named owa1, the user name is jbond and the message was deleted from the Inbox. The URL would be:
http://owa1.example.com/exchange/jbond/inbox/?cmd=showdeleted
If you need to view the cache from a folder that you may have created beneath the Inbox--i.e., a folder named Saved Messages, use the following URL:
http://owa1.example.com/exchange/jbond/inbox/saved%20messages?
cmd=showdeleted
Take note of the %20, which is the normal way to represent a space in a URL.
You will need to specify the user name and password for the user who owns the mailbox. Once logged in, OWA shows you the Recover Deleted Items window. Locate the message you want to recover, select it, and click the Recover button on the toolbar.
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