You’ve just installed your new Exchange 2013 server but there is a mailbox already there with a default name e.g. “Mailbox Database 0100716264”, if you are like me you’ll want to get rid of that and create a nice new one in a more sensible location but if you try to delete it you’ll get this message:
“This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes……”
So you need to move the mailboxes off it first, the user mailboxes are trivial, you just move them as normal, but for the rest of the mailboxes you’ll find that they are hidden or what Exchange calls arbitration mailboxes, to move these you need to do the following:
1. Create a new Mailbox database with a nice name, e.g. MBX01.
2. Open the Exchange Management Powershell and run this command to move all the user mailboxes (probably just the administrator if this is a green field setup.
Get-Mailbox –Database “Mailbox Database 010071624” | New-MoveRequest –TargetDatabase "MBX01"3. Now check if there are any arbitration mailboxes, which there will be:
Get-Mailbox -Arbitration4. Then move them with:
Get-Mailbox -Arbitration | New-MoveRequest -TargetDatabase "MBX01"5. That should be it running the below command should show no more mailboxes:
Get-Mailbox –Database “Mailbox Database 010071624”6. Now delete the mailbox store from the Exchange Management GUI or powershell. You should find it deletes ok.
