Restoring deleted e-mails

Like most other companies, we have a huge problem with users "accidentally" deleting all of their email. Rather than restoring their mail database and wiping out their current one, we "merge" the two by using the replication process. Here's how:

Note: This assumes you have manager rights to the user's mail file.

Open the user's mail file from the server

1. Go to the Replication Settings
2. From the "Space Savers" tab - > Purge the deletion stubs by setting the "Remove documents not modified in the last xx days" to 0 making sure NOT to check mark the box.
3. From the "Send" tab - > Checkmark the setting "Do NOT send deletions made in the this replica to other replicas"
4. From the "Other" tab - > Delete the contents of the "Only replicate incoming documents saved or modified after"
5. Go to the replication history and click the "Clear" button to clear replication history
6. Restore the user's mail file to a location OUTSIDE the Domino server (we typically use our local drive or a file server drive)
7. Add the icon for the restored copy of the user's mail file to your workspace
8. Since the rep ID's are the same, you can simply replicate this with the server copy of the mail file.

   You should now see the server copy has both the restored emails as well as the current ones. Sometimes, we have to go through Steps 3 through 6 SEVERAL times because the deletions stub are not purged for some reason (if anyone has an answer to this, I'd LOVE to know the cause - e-mail me here). Make sure when you are all done to set "Remove documents not modified in the last xx days" back to 90 (or whatever your company standard is) and to uncheck "Do NOT send deletions made in the this replica to other replicas". One other thing to keep in mind... if the user has a local replica of their mail file (or if there is another replica somewhere else in your environment), they will either need to follow the steps above OR pull down a new replica BEFORE they replicate again or they will delete all the mail you just restored.
   

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