Overview

A user has deleted some emails from their Sent Items, Deleted Items, and INBOX folders (Calendars, Contacts, etc.) and as a result, the user is unable to access emails in Webmail and Outlook.

The data restoration can be performed using Kerio Connect recovery from full or differential server backup files. The data might be stored in a 3rd-party external backup or using the Kerio Connect built-in backup functionality.

Prerequisites

Admin access to the Kerio Connect server

Diagnosis

Recovering data from a backup will replace the current data. If you only want to restore the missing emails, you will need to go to the backup, locate the email, calendar, and contacts you want to restore, and copy them to the user's folder.

The Kerio mailbox is structured as below:

\store\mail\domain.com\username\INBOX\#msgs
\store\mail\domain.com\username\Sent Items\#msgs
\store\mail\domain.com\username\Calendar\#msgs
\store\mail\domain.com\username\Contacts\#msgs

The emails, calendars, and contacts have the .eml extension, but the filename is randomly generated in hex format (e.g., 0000000a.eml).

From the backup, you need to locate the missing items and copy them to the appropriate #msgs folder.
If, for instance, the filename already exists, you can change the filename as long as it is in hex format.
If you are not sure how to change the filename, you can follow the format of the filenames in that folder. For example, if the newest file is 0000000a.eml, you can change it to 0000000b.eml.

The challenge here is how to check if you have the correct item to restore, as you will need to open the .eml file in Outlook or Notepad. You can also try the native search in Windows or run scripts to search for the emails (if you know specific keywords in the email like the recipient, etc.).

Solution

If the User Has an External Backup (Using Third-Party Backup Software):

Locate the Sent Items and Deleted folders in the external backup.
Copy the .eml files from the ...Sent Items/#msgs and ...Deleted/#msgs folder to the current folders.

If the User Has a Standard Kerio Connect Built-In Backup Functionality:

Check the .eml files in the last full backup.
Move the necessary or missing .eml files to the current folders.

To recover specific domain Public folder, copy .eml files to this folder: [domain]/#public/[folder_name]/#msgs.
For example, in the Windows environment, it will be similar to C:\Program Files\Kerio\MailServer\Store\Mail\[domain]\#public\[folder_name]\#msgs.

Additional Steps

After restoring the emails from a backup, the user needs to re-index the affected mailbox.

Articles in this section

Manual Backup restoration for specific User emails