Exchange: Troubleshooting Mailbox with BadItemsLimit Errors (Unrecommended)

Overview

Sometimes when you export a mailbox they fail due to corrupted items in the mailbox. Although this method isn’t consider a best practice, it can get the job done. Ideally you would want to remove the bad/corrupted items in the mailbox and proceed with exporting. For whatever reason you can increase the BadItemLimit for the export request to get the job done. You can generally fix these items using a MailboxRepairRequest.

Based on the Microsoft documentation for the New-MailboxExportRequest Cmdlet. The default BadItemsLimit is 0 on all Exchange server versions. If you exceed the limit of 51 bad items on Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013. You will be required to add the -AcceptLargeDataLoss flag to your Cmdlet. This switch will tell the Exchange Server that you accept that the data will not be copied.

PowerShell

All commands are run in the Exchange Management Shell. This can generally be opened on the server or initiated in a PSRemote shell.

The Cmdlet below will increase the bad item limit so you can export the mailbox. Increase the limit to suite your needs. Replace USERNAME with the mailbox of the user. Replace FILEPATH with the file path you intend to export to.

New-MailboxExportRequest -Mailbox USERNAME -FilePath FILEPATH.pst -BadItemLimit 25

Obtain a status of the job utilizing the Cmdlet below.

Get-MailboxExportRequest

Should you have errors executing the Cmdlets. You can increase the BadItemLimit. Personally, it would probably be better to remove them because it’s not best practice. But, if you don’t really care and just want to save the data. It should be fine. Famous last words for everyone.