What is Time-range Undelete?

Time-range Undelete, also called Undelete Restore is a Restore Mode that allows an administrator to restore from a mailbox all items, removed from the Trash folder within a given interval of time, and recover their status to the last change of status.

How Does it Work?

During a Time-range Undelete, the Zextras Backup engine searches the backup datastore for items flagged as DELETED in the selected time range, and restores them in the source folder of the mailbox. All the restored items will be tagged with a string named undelete_DD_MM_YY, in which DD_MM_YY represents the date when the undelete has been made.

The structure of the undeleted items is preserved, with each subfolder restored using its latest attribute available in the time window that is being restored. If no information is available, the folder will be called unknown_XX.

By using the CLI it is possible to restore items under a dedicated folder. Moreover, the undelete_DD_MM_YY tag can be used to filter items in the mailbox. A few examples can be find in the section below.

Corner cases

There are two points that is worth highlighting:

  1. In case an item or folder for some reason had the trash bin as its first position and this was its only position, they will be restored in the trash bin.

  2. Suppose you have a folder called Conference 2021, then delete all of the item it contains and rename it to Conference 2022. You later—​on 15th of November 2021—​carry out an Undelete Restore on the mailbox. All of the items and content will be restored under folder Conference 2021 and tagged as undelete_15_11_21.

To deal with IMAP-deleted emails in a more comfortable way for the user, during the Time-range Undelete the deleted IMAP flag will be stripped from any restored item, for the item itself to be visible in the Zimbra Web Client.

Running a Time-range Undelete

Via the Administration Console

  • Select Accounts in the left pane of the Administration Console to show the Accounts List.

  • Browse the list and click on the account to be restored (Source account).

  • On the top bar, press the wheel and then the Restore button.

  • Select Undelete as the Restore Mode and press Next.

  • Choose the restore date-time slot. Day/Month/Year can be selected via a mini-calendar widget, the hour via a drop-down menu, while the minute and second can be entered in two text boxes. Once done, click on Next.

  • Verify your choices in the Operation Summary window. You can also add more email addresses to be notified when the restore operation is finished. Please note that the admin account and the user who started the restore procedure are notified by default.

  • Click Finish to start the Restore.

Via the CLI

To start a Time-range Undelete operation, use the doUndelete command:

Quick reference

zxsuite backup doUndelete account "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"|first "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"|last [param VALUE[,VALUE]]

Examples:

zxsuite backup doUndelete John 08/10/2020 10:15:00 last

Performs an undelete on John’s account of all items created between 08/10/2012 10:15:00 and the latest data available and restores them in John’s mailbox, tagged with undelete_04_05_21.

zxsuite backup doUndelete John 08/10/2012 10:15:00 last target_original_folder false

Performs an undelete on John’s account of all items created between 08/10/2012 10:15:00 and the latest data available. The items will be restored under a separate folder in John’s mailbox.

At the end of the operation, you can check that the configuration of the new mailbox is the same by running the command zxsuite config dump.