Although the mailbox database in MS Office 365 is fairly secure, it does not mean that it is protected from accidentally deleting. Many times let users deleted their email messages from inbox and from the deleted items folder. You can also find deleted mails in Recover deleted items. However, there might be a situation when the user cannot find deleted email in Office 365 mailbox, the user will probably ask you to retrieve emails that have been missed. Moreover, a user can restore it directly through the Exchange Online mailbox by using In-Place eDiscovery & hold options (You should be the Global Administrator in Microsoft Office 365). In this blog, we are going to discuss a manual solution to know how to recover permanently deleted emails in Office 365 account in an efficient manner. Here are following steps to recover deleted emails from Office 365, some of them are discussed below:
1. Sign in to your Office 365 account and click on the Admin app.
2. On the Left-hand side pane, extend the Admin centers and select Exchange option (Exchange Admin Center).
3. Navigate to Permissions and then, Admin Roles. Next, choose Discovery Management from the list of roles and click the Edit icon.
4. In the resulting window, click on members section and plus (+) icon to add a single member. Search for the particular name. Go to add and Ok button and then, save it.
5. Again, Sign in and Sign out, so that change will take effect.
6. Once the permission is assigned to you, select the Compliance Management and the In-Place eDiscovery & hold section. Click on plus (+) icon.
7. Provide a specific name for your search and the description (optional). Press Next button.
8. You can select a mailbox that you wish to search. Choose the option Specify mailboxes to search, and click on plus (+) icon to add a certain mailbox. Click on Next.
9. The next step is to define the criteria for search queries. Select Filter based on criteria option, and adjust search options according to your needs. If you want to provide multiple keyword in a search query, you should separate them with AND or OR, but not with commas.
10. In same wizard, click on Select the message types and go to Email. Click the OK button. You can identically search for all contacts, meeting events, etc.
11. After adjusting the search query as per your needs, click on Next.
12. In In-Place eDiscovery and hold page, press Next without selecting any other option as we do not want to place this content on hold.
13. Then, your settings will save. Once the entire procedure is done, click to Close option.
14. Choose the search you have created and click on Refreshto update the information shown in the details panel. The current status of an Estimate Succeeded indicates that a search has been finished.
15. In the details panel, click the Preview search results for displaying items. This will help you to identify each item you are searching for.
16. If you can not find the item by previewing a search result, then you will copy all search results to special mailboxes (it is known as a discovery mailbox) and open that particular mailbox in O365 to view all the items properly.
- In copy search results page, click on Browse.
- Click the Discovery Search Mailbox under the display name, and click OK. Then, select Copy option (shown in above screenshot).
- When copying is completed, select Open button to open a Discovery Search Mailbox to view all search results.
- All the search results can be copied to Discovery Search Mailbox, which is placed in the desired folder with the same name as In-Place eDiscovery search.
17. After finding each item you are trying to restore it for a user, the further step is to export the results from a search you ran to Export mailboxes to PST. A user can utilize this Outlook PST file in upcoming step to recover deleted items to another mailbox.
18. Go to Run to install eDiscovery software
19. Click Browse button to add the desired location and then, leave this option enable deduplication & include unsearchable items.
20. After assigning the PST location click on Start icon, it will ask for MS Office 365 admin credentials, after giving the same download that will start.
21. Finally, you can send this PST file to a user so that he can repair and restore. Users have to use Microsoft Outlook desktop mail client to restore all deleted items by using PST files. Click to option Open Outlook Data File, browse that file and press OK button. Outlook PST file that appears in the left-navigation bar in MS Outlook application. Expanding the same and then, right-click on the items that you need to recover and click Move and then, go to Inbox folder. You can view all recoverable items successfully.
Final Words
It becomes necessary to manage each mailbox and delete unwanted emails as well. Therefore, it is highly recommended to take help of a reliable third-party solution i.e., Office 365 Exporter tool. With this utility, you can take backup of Office 365 emails, contacts, tasks to PST format to deal with situations like accidentally deletion, improper shutdown, etc.
