How to Recover Deleted Emails in Office 365

Here, we have picked the user query from the forum sites to understand the problem well:

Amelia Daniels: “I am the global administrator of the company. I asked one of my Office 365 users to remove 10 emails from 2013 which were of no use. But, by mistake, he had deleted the entire mailbox containing almost 2500 emails. From these emails, at least 60% are genuinely important from work. Now, I cannot restore them. I need help to recover deleted emails in Office 365. Any solutions please?”

Oftentimes, users remove their emails accidentally from the Inbox and deleted items folder. The deleted items can be recovered from the folder named recover deleted items. But, what if the emails are not present in that folder either? The solution is to use In-Place eDiscovery and hold feature of the Exchange Online.

Workaround to Recover Deleted Emails in Office 365 Admin

A user needs to follow the given set of instructions to restore deleted emails in Office 365 account:

• Sign in to your Exchange Online account and switch to the admin app.
• On the left-hand side column, Click on Admin centers and select the option Exchange (Exchange Admin Center).
• Switch to the Permissions tab followed by Admin Roles. The entire list of the roles will be displayed on the screen. Select the option Discovery Management and choose the Edit icon.
• A new window will prompt on the screen. Navigate to the members section and select the plus sign “+” to add a member to the list. Find your name, select the option Add and click on OK. At last, save the changes.
• Sign out of the account and then resign it. This is done so that the changes are absorbed into the account.
• After you are assigned with the necessary permissions, switch to the Compliance Management and then select the option In-Place eDiscovery & Hold. Click on the plus “+” icon.
• Here, you are required to provide the name of the search and the description is optional. Click on Next.
• You can select any mailbox you wish to search. Select the option specify mailboxes to search followed by clicking “+” icon and then Next.
• In next step, you have to select a particular criteria for the search query. Select the option Filter based on criteria and adjust the search option depending upon your needs. This point is to be noted that if you have to specify more than one keywords in the search query field, it can be done by separating them with OR or AND. Do not use commas.
• In the same screen, select the option select message types present at the bottom of the page and then select Email from the new window. Click on OK. Or you can choose other categories too if you want.
• Once all the search query has been adjusted according to your requirements, click on Next.
• 1From the In-Place eDiscovery and Hold page, you do not have to select any option because it is not needed to put any item on Hold. Click directly on Next.
• All the settings will be saved now. After the process is complete, select the option Close.
• Choose the search you have created and select the option Refresh. By doing this, all the information which is displayed on the pane will be updated. When the status turns to Estimate succeeded, it implies that the search has finished.
• In the details opened up on the screen, select Preview search results to view the items. This option will help you to recognize the items you are searching for.
• In case, you do not find the desired item, you can find it by another way. Copy the required search result and paste it into a special mailbox called discovery mailbox. This will open the mailbox in MS Outlook on the web. This will help to view the items. To do this:
  • On the page of copy search page, select the option Browse.
  • Under the display name heading, select Discovery Search Mailbox. Click on the option OK and then select Copy.
  • Once the copying procedure is done, select the option Open. This will open the Discovery Search Mailbox. This will enable you to view all the search results.
  • The search results which are replicated to Discovery Search Mailbox will be placed in the folder which has the same name as present in In-Place eDiscovery search.

• Once the item has been found that you want to recover, next step is to export the results with the help of option Export to PST. This PST file will be needed in the next step to recover deleted emails in Office 365 admin.
• 1In this step, you have to install the eDiscovery tool by clicking on the option Run.
• Select the Browse option to specify the location and leave the option enable deduplication and include unsearchable items.
• Once you have provided the destination location of PST, press on Start. Then, you have to enter the credentials of the Exchange online account. The downloading will start after that.
• In the last step, the PST file is to be sent to the user so that it can be restored. Outlook desktop app is required to recover deleted items in Office 365 using an Outlook PST file. Select the option Open Outlook data file. Browse the required file and click on the option OK. The PST file will appear in the left navigation bar of MS Outlook. Open the Outlook PST file, select the items you have to retrieve, right-click on them. From the options, select Move and then Inbox.

Workaround to Recover Deleted Emails in Office 365 Admin

You all have heard that the prevention is better than cure. Hence, in case users delete some of the important emails, then they must have a backup of the data. The backup of Office 365 mailbox can be obtained by the third-party tool like Office365Export PST tool. This is the professional solution to save the data of Office 365 in different file formats like PST and EML file format. Selective data can also be backed up by applying filters.

Conclusion

If the user has deleted important emails from Office 365, they can be recovered without any problem. Even if the items are not present in recover deleted items folders, they can still be retrieved from In-Place eDiscovery feature. Also, an automated tool is also introduced to recover deleted emails in Office 365.