As with any other Microsoft application, when you delete an email message or any other item from the Exchange server mailbox, you are simply moving it from its present location to the Deleted Items folder. In other words, if you realized that the item you had just deleted was actually required by you, all you would need to do would be to go to the Deleted Items folder, find the item you had deleted and click on Restore to Original Location. This will put the item back in its original location. No damage has been done to the item and you can recover exchange data stored in the item.

 

On the other hand, if the item is permanently deleted from the Exchange mailbox, you may find it a little difficult to restore it easily. You can usually permanently delete any item by first going to the Deleted Items folder and then deciding which ones you really do not need. From here, you could permanently delete the unwanted items. You could also intentionally or accidentally delete an item permanently in any one of the following ways:

·        Instead of simply clicking on the Delete button to delete an item, you may have actually used a Shift+Delete button. This is called 'hard deleting' and permanently deletes the item, instead of first sending it to the Deleted Items folder. It is not easy to recover exchange data stored in an item that is permanently deleted.

·        The network administrator deletes the mailbox you are using on the Microsoft Exchange server by mistake. In this case, the mailbox is permanently deleted. If you have been working with the data in the mailbox in an offline folder, it is entirely possible that most of the data is still stored in the form of Offline Storage Folders (OST files). OST files are simply mirror images of the actual contents of the server-based mailbox. When changes occur in the OST files or the server-based mailbox, during synchronization all changes are uniformly made. If an item has been deleted before synchronization, your OST files may still contain all the important data and you may need to merely move them to a PST file so that the data is more easily accessible. On the other hand, if you have already carried out synchronization, then the item will be shown to be missing from the OST file as well.

 

One of the simplest ways in which you can deal with deleted Exchange items is by using recovery tools such as Advanced Exchange Recovery by DataNumen to recover Exchange data. These tools not only recover data from seriously corrupted OST files but also help in recovering deleted items as well. In fact, all types of deleted items can be recovered by this software including email messages, appointments, address books, meeting requests, journals, notes, tasks, contacts and many more. With the ability to work on single OST files as well as on batch files, Advanced Exchange Recovery truly makes recovery of exchange data fairly easy and hassle free.