Converting a shared mailbox to user mailbox [ Exchange 2013 & Office365 ]

Recently I was working on a migration from on-premises Exchange 2010 servers to Office365 . As Office365 is based on Exchange 2013 I decided to created the multi-accessed mailboxes as a shared mailboxes rather than user mailboxes.

After a while a request was raised requesting changing one of the shared mailboxes to a user mailbox ( as it will be used for an authenticated application )

The conversion is doable using PowerShell , as follow :

• Connect to Office365 using remote PowerShell using the following steps
  • Store your Office365 credentials , as follow

$Office365Cred=Get-Credentials

• At the credentials popup enter your credentials and hit Enter
• Create a remote session using the following PowerShell cmdlet

$Office365Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell -Credential $Office365Cred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection

Controlling the database path/location for Exchange 2013 database

As Exchange 2013 comes with the new management paradigm Exchange Administration Center ( EAC ) which is a web based management interface some of the basic functions were found to be missing. One of the missing functions is the ability to relocate ( move ) mailbox database(s) and log files via the console !

In order to overcome this there are some tips that will help you in minimizing the need of moving the databases of your Exchange 2013 servers , as below :

- Use the command line for installing the mailbox servers to control the name and the path of the initial server’s mailbox database by using /MdbName , /DbFilePath and /LogFolderPath switches :

Setup.exe /Mode:Install /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms /Roles:Mailbox /MdbName:MBDB-01 /DbFilePath:”D:\Exchange Databases/MBDB-01/MBDB-01.edb” /LogFolderPath:”L:\Exchange Logs”

Once completed both database and logs will be at the assigned within the installation paths .

Creating a shared mailbox using Exchange 2013 Exchange Admin Center ( EAC )

Creating of a mailbox that allows multiple users to monitor and reply to email sent to its email address (for example, an address used specifically by the help desk) is a common tasks for each organization .

For old Exchange version such accounts were created as normal mailboxes then the required permissions are granted to all recipient that require access to these mailboxes . With Exchange 2013 things changed ! as a dedicated new recipient type – namely shared was added to the allowed to be created recipients which facilitates creation of such accounts ( mailboxes ) .

In this post I will show how you can create a shared mailbox and assign the required access levels to it .

First of all , login to the Exchange Admin Center and navigate to the Recipients from the left side menu , choose Shared from the available options then click + to start with a new shared mailbox creation :

“Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: Couldn’t find the Enterprise Organization Container” while installing Exchange Server 2013

As Exchange 2013 reached general availability and as I was working on building my Exchange 2013 lab I got into the following issue while preparing the Active Directory :

Here is what I found at ExchangeSetup.log :

Preparing Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2013 Preview installation

As I showed in earlier post how you can install Exchange 2013 Preview on Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate , I will show in this one how you can prepare for its installation on Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1 after which you can proceed with installation as shown here . 

As you may guessed that installation with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will involved more preparation rather with Windows Server 2012 due to required of some pre-installation patching which already done for Windows server 2012 .

Microsoft introduced Exchange 2013 Preview in a two roles only architecture ( Client Access Server and Mailbox Server ) which can be either installed in combination on a single box or separated each on its dedicated box.

How to : Install Exchange 2013 preview

As Microsoft announced the release of Exchange 13 preview which can be downloaded from here . In this post I will show how to install Exchange 13 on Windows Server 2012 Release Preview edition .

Windows roles and features : at an elevated Windows PowerShell execute the following :

Install-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation -Restart