The Migration Mailbox For The Organization Is Either Missing Or Invalid Error During Exchange 2013 Mailbox Move

15 Comments

1. Dear Rajith,

   I have a similiar problem in a child domain. I can find the arbitration mailboxes in the shell, if I ‘Set-ADServerSettings -ViewEntireForest $true’.

   Do you have an idea, how to solve this in the Admin Center?

   Regards
   Andreas

   Reply

   1. Hi Andreas,

      The arbitration accounts (from memory) are created in the root domain and hence you can find it when you are scanning the entire forest. What do you mean when you say how to solve this in admin center? Checking out arbitration mailboxes is not a common admin task.

      Thanks
      Rajith

      Reply

2. In my case currently, I have a missing migration mailbox. None of the commands, including the setup.exe /preparead /iacceptexchangeserverlicenseterms command, recreates this mailbox. So therefore of course running the enable command for it fails. Is there a procedure which will re-create this missing migration mailbox? This is an Exchange 2013 CU10 installation, an in-process migration from a Exchange 2003, so I cannot just uninstall and reinstall Exchange 2013. There was an initial installation of Exchange 2013 that failed disastrously in part to human error and needed to be removed from the organization, now no migration mailbox is present.

   Reply

   1. Hi John,

      The initial “bad” installation would have removed the migration mailbox. Running Setup.exe/PrepareAD will create the AD account, not the mailbox. The mailbox will have to be enabled after that.
      Please check https://theucguy.net/cannot-open-microsoft-system-attendant-mailbox-error-during-exchange-2013-mailbox-move/

      Thanks

      Reply

3. Hi Rajith

   I am in the process of 2010 to 2013 migration and in a co-existence setup, 3:3 CAS & Mailbox roles deployed.

   Suddenly the first installed 2013 mailbox server crashed and not booting up. Since it’s a 1st installed MBX 2013 server, there are certain operations in exchange admin console are not working and searching this server..like error connecting to server MBX** //administrativegroup/

   Since the default mailboxes (Administrator and Discovery Mailbox) and the Arbitration Mailboxes are in the 1st mailbox server, Is that any way to recover the 1st mailbox server with required default mailboxes? if so can you pl suggest steps

   Reply

4. the error is:

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

   Click here for help…

   Reply

   1. Hi Ryan,

      Do you have all the 5 arbitration mailbox and the default discovery search mailbox?

      Get-Mailbox -Arbitration and Get-Mailbox -Filter {RecipientTypeDetails -eq “DiscoveryMailbox”}

      Reply

      1. Hi

         Unfortunately I am not able to post screenshot here. Below is the output of the above PS command

         Basically yes i do see the discovery mailbox

         [PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-Mailbox -Filter { RecipientTypeDetails -eq “DiscoveryMailbox” } |ft
         Creating a new session for implicit remoting of “Get-Mailbox” command…

         Name Alias ServerName ProhibitSendQuota
         —- —– ———- —————–
         DiscoverySearchMailbox… DiscoverySearchMa… serverA 50 GB (53,687,091,200 bytes)

         I have only 2 mailboxes when I run the Get-Mailbox -Arbitration command

         [PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-Mailbox -Arbitration

         Name Alias ServerName ProhibitSendQuota

         SystemMailbox{bb558c35… SystemMailbox{bb5… ServerA Unlimited
         Migration.8f3e7716-201… Migration.8f3e771… ServerA 300 MB

         Reply

         1. Hi Ryan,

            The problem is that 3 of the arbitration mailbox is missing.
            Run setup.exe /preparead /iacceptexchangeserverlicenseterms from the 2013 media. This will re-create all the arbitration AD accounts.
            Once the accounts are present in AD, give them a mailbox by running Enable-Mailbox -identity “arbitration account” -Arbitration

            Thanks.

            Reply

            1. Hi, I, have the same problem. I ran setup /pad /iacceptexchangeserverlicenseterms many times but the migration account is not re-created. Could you help please ?

               Reply

               1. That is strange Ivoire. Do you have a blank root domain?

                  Reply

5. Hi Rajith,

   I have a problem a bit similar to this one. I migrated all mailboxes to Exchange 2013 and decommissioned my Exchange 2010 environment. Now when I click on eDiscovery tab in Exchange 2013 I get the error about “Discovery mailbox missing”. I checked. The discovery user account (disabled by default) and the discovery mailbox is still in the environment. How can i get rid of this error?

   Thanks

   P.S. Should we disable the last system mailboxes on Exchange 2010 before uninstall as we cannot move them onto Exchange 2013?

   Reply

   1. Hi Ryan,

      Do you have five arbitration mailboxes when you run Get-Mailbox -Arbitration, as one of the system mailbox is used in eDiscovery.
      I take you have the discovery mailbox listed when you search for it?

      Reply

      1. Hi Rajith, Yes i Have the discovery mailbox listed. Please see screenshot below:

         Get-Mailbox -Filter { RecipientTypeDetails -eq “DiscoveryMailbox” } |ft

         Name Alias ServerName ProhibitSendQuota
         —- —– ———- —————–
         DiscoverySearchMailbox… DiscoverySearchMa… serverA 50 GB (53,687,091,200 bytes)
         SearchResults SearchResults serverA 50 GB (53,687,091,200 bytes)

         Get-Mailbox -Arbitration
         Name Alias ServerName ProhibitSendQuota
         —- —– ———- —————–
         SystemMailbox{bb558c35… SystemMailbox{bb5… serverA Unlimited
         Migration.8f3e7716-201… Migration.8f3e771… serverA 300 MB (314,572,800 bytes)

         Reply

         1. Hi Ryan,

            The Get-Mailbox -Arbitration output is hard to read, does it have 5 of them listed?

            Reply