Running Exchange 2013 CU2 w/ Active Directory at 2008 functional level. Have deleted mailbox retention time set to 30 days. 10 days ago, we deleted 3 former executive accounts through AD Users and Computers. Now the powers that be would like to recover the mailboxes to retrieve some old emails. Trying to restore the mailboxes using this information http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj863438(v=exchg.150).aspx, but the mailboxes are not showing up as disabled or detached. There are other mailboxes listed that were deleted at various times before and after these 3, but I do not know how they were deleted.
Should a mailbox deleted from AD Users & Computers be recoverable, or will the system hard delete the mailbox? Is there a setting to change this behavior? I do have backups and can restore via recovery database, but It would be much less time consuming to be able to reattach the mailbox.