Exchange Server 2016 Discovery Search Mailbox cannot be found

Usama A. Rub 146 Reputation points
2023-02-28T19:50:51.7266667+00:00

I recently shifted an old Exchange Server 2010 setup to 2016.

Everything is working out fine on the new server. But in EAC, when e-discovery setting is clicked i get the error that

"The discovery search mailbox, a hidden default mailbox that is required to search mailboxes cannot be found. It may have been inadvertently deleted. This mailbox must be re-created before you can search mailboxes."

I deleted the previous DiscoveySearchMailbox that was hosted on old exchange 2010 database and recreated a new one on Ex 2016 database but still getting the same error.

Although I have never used discovery search but the error is quite frustrating. Should I just ignore it or will it somehow be used somewhere?

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Accepted answer
  1. Xuyan Ding - MSFT 7,561 Reputation points
    2023-03-01T10:17:34.5266667+00:00

    Hi @Usama A. Rub,

    Since i created it manually, so Guid was not displayed.

    It seems that the DiscoverySearchMailbox you created manually did not work properly. Did you create it directly through the New-Mailbox command in this article?

    In my test, the newly created DiscoverySearchMailbox has the correct guid. So I would suggest that you first delete the DiscoverySearchMailbox you created manually and the SystemMailbox mentioned by David, then let Exchange create them automatically through the PrepareAD command, and then enable them after the creation is complete.

    For specific steps, please follow this official document: Recreate missing arbitration mailboxes.

    1.In Active Directory Users and Computers, delete DiscoverySearchMailbox and SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9} from the Users container. or via the Power Shell command: 

       Remove-Mailbox “Mailbox” -Arbitration

    User's image

    2.Open Command Prompt. Browsed into the Setup location , run Setup.exe/prepareAD. Exchange will automatically create the system mailboxs.

    3.Enable Mailbox:

       Enable-Mailbox -Identity  “SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}” -Arbitration
   
   Enable-Mailbox -Identity “DiscoverySearchMailbox {D919BA05-46A6-415f-80AD-7E09334BB852}” -Discovery

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    1 person found this answer helpful.

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