Step-By-Step: Restoring A Deleted Object via Active Directory Recycle Bin
Accidents happen from time to time and files and/or objects can be mistakenly deleted. As penned in a previous post entitled Step-By-Step: Enabling Active Directory Recycle Bin in Windows Server 2012 R2, all is not lost. System administrators are now empowered with the ability to restore deleted objects from within Windows Server 2012 R2's offering of Active Directory once the feature is enabled. This Step-By-Step will provide instruction as to how to restore said objects and restore piece of mind should an object be "accidentally" deleted.
Resorting an object in Active Directory
- In the management console, go to Tools > Active Directory Administrative Center
- Click the Deleted Objects folder
- Search the list of deleted objects for the object that needs to be restored.
- Right-click the selected object and select Restore from the shortcut menu.
Depending on your business practices and environment, object lifetime and the tombstone lifetime can be increased or decreased. Tombstone lifetime is determined via the value of the tombstoneLifetime attribute and the deleted object lifetime is determined by the value of the msDS-deletedObjectLifetime attribute. By default, tombstoneLifetime is set to null, which expires the tombstone lifetime defaults after 60 days. By default, msDS-deletedObjectLifetime is also set to null and changes to the value of the tombstone lifetime should it ever be changed.