As an Exchange administrator we have probably all had that panic call from an administrative assistant want to recall a message that was inadvertently sent to the wrong group.  Every end-user knows that Outlooks “Re-Call” capability stinks.  Microsoft’s Exchange Mailbox Merge tool can be used to perform this function (Available as a download from Microsoft Here).  You’ve probably used this tool before to extract a single user’s mailbox from the Exchange Recovery Storage group to a PST.

We can use a similar technique to extract and delete all of the messages that match a criteria like “SUBJECT” to a PST and then simply throw away the PST.

Before we begin make sure the account you are using is NOT a Domain Admin and has read access to the mailstore and all of the mailboxes.  I like setting this permission on the SERVER level and letting it propagte down to the individual mailboxes.  You can’t use a Domain Admin account because Exchange explicitly denies Domain Admins read access at the mailbox level.

Startup exmerge, and choose the “Extract or Import (Two Step Procedure).

This allows us to extract the messages that meet our criteria first before trying to import or restore the messages.

Select "Extract or Import (Two Step Procedure)

So first we perform step 1 to extract the messages. (more…)