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View and Restore Removed Entries (Active Directory only)

When an entry is removed from an Active Directory server, the server does not actually delete the entry, but instead moves it to a container for temporary storage, thus allowing for its eventual recovery if removed by accident.

With LDAP Administrator, you can view the Deleted Objects container contents and restore any objects it contains either to their original or to a new, user-specified location.

To view and restore the deleted objects: 

  1. Connect to an Active Directory server whose Deleted Objects container(-s) you are interested in.

  2. Click Restore Deleted Objects on the Server toolbar to launch the Active Directory Tombstone Manager.

With the Active Directory Tombstone Manager, you can:

View Deleted Objects Entries and Their Attributes

Each Active Directory partition has its own Deleted Objects container. By default, Tombstone Manager uses the partition that is currently selected. Use the Select Partition combo-box to change the default partition or to aggregate all the partition Deleted Objects containers contents of all the partitions into a single view via selecting the <All> item.

The left-hand side view displays the contents of the Deleted Objects container. Select an entry to view its attributes in the right-hand side pane.

Fetching the contents of the Deleted Objects container may take much time if there are a large number of entries in it. You can discontinue background download at any time by pressing the Stop button.

Press the Refresh button to reload the Deleted Objects container view.

Restore Deleted Entries

To restore a deleted entry you can use either the Quick Restore command (if the entry contains enough information to be restored automatically), or the Restore Wizard - if last parent entry is unknown or some of the required attributes are missing. The Restore Wizard consists of the following two steps.

Step1: Parent DN

At this step, you need to specify or change to a destination container DN where the entry is being restored into.

Step2: Adding Attributes and Their Values

Here you must specify attributes and their values which the entry is required to contain. You can also add optional attributes or edit existing values. This step is similar to the Adding Attributes and Their Values step in the Creating New Entry.

To restore objects from the Deleted Objects, container the user you authenticate with or a group the user belongs to should possess the Reanimate Tombstone control access right.

See Also