[TheEricHarris]

Hi gang,

This comes up every so often but today it seems rather urgent. HR accidently emailed confidential data to a group of users. The recall feature in Outlook is worthless, so we went into each user's mailbox and deleted the message. But most of the users have BlackBerries, so this is an issue. We are running BES 4.1. Is there a way to delete these emails remotely without going to each user's BB?

I've searched and can't find anything!

Thanks!!

Eric

[DarienA]

I'm not sure I get this question... once you delete the email in the persons inbox the next time their Blackberry reconciles the email will be deleted from the Blackberry. I think that's all you can do is wait for that reconcile, unless there's a new feature in 4.1. (We're still on 4.0).

[TheEricHarris]

Most users have their reconcilation set to Delete on Handheld only. So the inbox and BB are not synching.

[DarienA]

Originally Posted by TheEricHarris

Most users have their reconcilation set to Delete on Handheld only. So the inbox and BB are not synching.

Wow that's the exact opposite of our organization... I'm going to be curious to see if anyone else can help you here because I can't even think of a way how you'd be able to remotely access a BB's Message DB.

EDIT:

Still and I haven't investigated this because all of the BB's here are set to full reconcile... how would that reconciliation address an email that was deleted from the persons inbox?

[nsquark]

you might have to wipe the entire handheld remotely. it's a bit extreme but it might outweight the risk of them reading that email.

[Snyder81]

Originally Posted by nsquark

you might have to wipe the entire handheld remotely. it's a bit extreme but it might outweight the risk of them reading that email.

If it went to their BlackBerry, they've likely already read it. You can get rid of the email by wiping the entire device, but you can't take back what they saw.

[b52junebug]

Even with the delete on handheld only feature set on the bb, the Mailbox wins. Meaning the mailbox deletion takes precedent.. If you were in fact succssful in deleting the email from all of the groups inboxs and allowing that email to go into the trash can. Then it should delete from the handheld. However if you do a perment delete, ie. shift delete, the email will not move to the trashcan and be "dumped" from there. It has got to move from the inbox to the trashcan for the bb to recognize the email has been deleted.

[AlanM]

At our organization we use the "Kill Blackberry" feature. Just wipe it. With 4.x we do wireless activation (after we know the message is removed from Exchange) and everything returns to the BB. The wipe BB is a bit harsh, but we wind up doing it often due to "classified" emails or a user forgets their password (forgets password, battery drains and shuts BB down, charge BB and wireless is disabled, can't send OTA password).

Alan

[ladydi]

I agree with B52. "Delete on Handheld" only applies to mail deleted from the device. Mail moved to the trash from the inbox will still delete off the BB unless the message was marked as saved. (You must also take into account the hard delete factor - in 4.1, there is a setting on the BES to reconcile hard deleted items, but if you don't have it enabled, you're up a creek)

Also, wiping it won't necessarily work I think. Won't the device repopulate a certain amount of the e-mail after re-activation of the same account on the same device?

[AlanM]

Originally Posted by ladydi

Also, wiping it won't necessarily work I think. Won't the device repopulate a certain amount of the e-mail after re-activation of the same account on the same device?

That's why we delete the email from Exchange (either from the users acount or Exmerge), then send the kill command to the BB. It's a bit harsh. I know. I wonder if there is anything in the SQL DB that would allow you to prune certain messages.

[kt9mango]

As far as I know the only way to delete a single e-mail from the Device, is by doing so from the device. The service is only able to push. Deleting a mail from the device will remove it from Exchange mailbox, but not the other way round. I cannot imagine why it is not possible to have bi-directional delete as an option but it seems this is the case.

[TheEricHarris]

Thanks for all the replies. We thought about the kill option but decided against it. I really wish RIM had a solid answer to this, as it's happened more than once. This time it was someone in Accounting who sent the wrong spreadsheet to a bunch of managers, which included the entire company's payroll information!!!! She for sure thought it was a resume generating mistake! lol. But it was deleted on everyone's exchange mailboxes and everyone was sent an email advising to not read the spreadsheet and delete it immediately. Shxt happens!

[CanuckBB]

Upgrade the BES to 4.1. Then you can hard delete from the mailbox and it will delete from the handheld.

'Delete on Handheld only' refers to what happens to the message when deleted from the handheld.

Of course, it's likely the email was already read.

You are trying to solve a people problem with technology. Can't be done.

[Flying Dutchman]

B52 is right. No matter what you have the Blackberry preferences set to (delete on handheld only or "handheld and mailbox") and changes made in your corporate Email account will be pushed to the Blackberry. So if you delete if from the user's inbox, it will be delete from the Blackberry as well..

By the way, I think you have quite a group of not so smart users there if this is something that happens all the time at your company. To repeat SNL's Nick Burns (your company computer guys) "Should you guys not wear helmets or something? They teach this stuff on bluesclues".. hahaha