How to delete a folder in a mailbox
We have a strange issue where a user has a 1GB mailbox, and 380MB of it is not visible, or able to be deleted. When we run a get-mailbox -Identity BadUser | Get-MailboxFolderStatistics | Select Identity, FolderPath, ItemsInFolder, FolderSize then it lists all the folders for user "BadUser" including; /RSS Feeds 0 0B /Search results 1 134B /Chinese New Year Celebration.EML 28339 394103650B /Software 23 178810B /Sync Issues 1 160B This shows that the item/folder "Chinese New Year Celebration.EML" contains 28,339 items and is 380ish MB in size. It's also interesting that it is listed out of alphabetical order. This does not get shown in Outlook 2010, Outlook 2003, Outloook Web Access 2007 or in the Outlook "Folder Size" report (right click on the mailbox name) I have tried deleting this with Get-Mailbox -Identity BadUser | Export-Mailbox -IncludeFolders "\Chinese New Year Celebration.EML" -DeleteContent And this processes and then results in zero bytes being deleted and the folder/item still exists. I have also tried it with wildcards and with -AllContentKeywords and with -SubjectKeywords (obviously these two parameters are mutually exclusive), but I have run about 30 different variations to try and get rid of this item. I have also tried creating a COM connection similar to in this thread But, nothing seems to touch this item. Is there any other way I can purge this affected iteme/folder/content? Thanks
May 24th, 2011 1:41am

So you want to delete "/Chinese New Year Celebration.EML 28339 394103650B" ? Is the folder created by the same user or some one else? Check in Public Folder Management Console do you see this folder? Check the permission and post the result. Gulab | MCTS-MCITP Messaging: 2010 | MCTS-MCITP Messaging: 2007 | MCC 2011 | Skype: Gulab.Mallah | Blog: www.exchangeranger.blogspot.com
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May 24th, 2011 2:29am

No, I want to delete "/Chinese New Year Celebration.EML" - the numbers after are from the output from the PowerShell command I ran. The item/folder is not known to the user whose mailbox it appears in. It is not a Public Folder - it is in a user's mailbox. Before running the Export-Mailbox command, I ran a "Get-Mailbox -Identity BadUser | Add-MailboxPerrmission -User Christian -AccessRights FullAccess" and this gave me full access over the affected Bad User.
May 24th, 2011 3:12am

Did you tried the below: Disable the mailbox and enable it again, check the issue? Move the mailbox from one Database to another? Export the PST using Outlook, create Test Mailbox and Import the PST and check the issue! Cheers, Gulab | MCTS-MCITP Messaging: 2010 | MCTS-MCITP Messaging: 2007 | MCC 2011 | Skype: Gulab.Mallah | Blog: www.ExchangeRanger.blogspot.com
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May 24th, 2011 5:17am

Can you see it, and maybe fix or set permissions on it, with ExFolders? -Peter
May 24th, 2011 7:48pm

Hi ChristianWickham, I would suggest that you could delete it through MFCMAPI. Some information for you: http://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=55FDFFD7-1878-4637-9808-1E21ABB3AE37&displaylang=en Regards! Gavin TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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May 25th, 2011 4:49am

Hi, Try using MFCMapi to sort out the issue. You can see the folder that is invisible in Outlook and also you can delete the folder. -- If you are able see the folder using MFCMapi, click on that folder and look for the Property Name(s): PR_ATTR_HIDDEN, PidTagAttributeHidden, ptagAttrHidden. Right click on this property and click 'Edit Property' and then uncheck the Boolean (if checked already). This allows you see that folder in outlook. Right click on the folder in MFCMapi and Delete. -Sree
May 25th, 2011 6:50am

Disable the mailbox and enable it again? Tried that, no success. Move the mailbox from one database to another? Tried that. The "hidden" folder gets moved too. We have not tried an export to PST yet, that will be our last resort. Thanks
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June 1st, 2011 8:22pm

Thanks for the advice and the updated version of MFCMapi MFCMapi also could not see the folder / item. It is not listed anywhere.
June 1st, 2011 8:23pm

Thanks for the advice, but the folder/item is not showing in MFCMapi, even with a user who has full ownership over the mailbox.
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June 1st, 2011 8:28pm

Hi Christian, It sounds odd, as normal, mfcmapi could view any folders in the mailbox, it sounds some corruption in the mailbox. How about to use the new-mailboxrepairrequest to repaire the mailbox. How about to move the mailbox to other database, and then check it. If all the methods could not resolve your issue, maybe the export and import it a better way, thanks to the mailbox not too large. :) Regards! Gavin TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contacttngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
June 1st, 2011 11:03pm

After much attempts to resolve this, we exported the user's mailbox to a PST file with Outlook. This was chosen because Outlook could not see this corrupted item so would not export it. Then we deleted the mailbox and created a new one and re-imported the PST. The user's mail came back OK, without this corrupted item. But, I had to manually regenerate the OAB so that the user could connect to their new mailbox, because the OAB was resolving to the old mailbox name. This problem has continued to all people trying to send emails to the user's new mailbox. Senders would get an undeliverable response - and it was their Outlook autocomplete that needed to be fixed. But, we are having problems with people sending to the affected user's new mailbox. Even when they have deleted the old entry from their Outlook autocomplete, they are still getting occasional bounce back undeliverable messages stating that it cannot locate the address IMCEAEX-_O=CompanyName_OU=First+20Administrative+20Group_cn=Recipients_cn=person.name@company.local #550 5.1.1 RESOLVER.ADR.ExRecipNotFound; not found ## This problem has continued to appear and happens about 25% of the time when a user attempts to send an email to the user who has had their mailbox recreated. About 130 people have had problems sending emails to the new mailbox. Any ideas on how I can resolve this?
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June 15th, 2011 1:24am

Hi Christian, Per the NDR you referred, the issue also could be caused by outlook cache and autocomplete. We could add a x500 Proxy address for the old the legacyexchangedn, some information for you: http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2009/05/21/cannot-reply-to-old-emails-or-modify-old-calendar-items-after-pst-mail-migration.aspx How about do a test, create a new profile for the user who send email failed. Regards! Gavin TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contacttngfb@microsoft.comPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
June 16th, 2011 2:53am

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