Forum Discussion
Deleting a user is broken
Deleting a user and assigning their Exchange mailbox doesn't delete them any more. The previous/expected process: Delete user in Office365 Admin Center Convert their mailbox to shared and assign...
Converting the mailbox to shared always required you to keep the underlying user object, if it gets deleted the mailbox would be deleted as well. There is no way to "unlink" a user from the mailbox, at least not a supported way. The "assign" part from that wizard is simply granting Full Access permissions, the "original" user account will still have access.
You can easily test this yourself - create a user mailbox, then convert it to Shared from within the EAC or PowerShell. You will notice that the user object remains as is. If you then delete the user object, the shared mailbox will be gone too.
You can easily test this yourself - create a user mailbox, then convert it to Shared from within the EAC or PowerShell. You will notice that the user object remains as is. If you then delete the user object, the shared mailbox will be gone too.
Nino_Bilic
Microsoft
MicrosoftThis very thing. Deleting the user would always result in mailbox being disconnected (therefore loss of access to the mailbox). Shared mailboxes in Exchange Online must have the user account associated with them; by default this user account will not be enabled for direct logon but user account has to exist whether the shared mailbox was created anew or the user mailbox has been converted to a shared mailbox. This is expected design. The mailbox cannot exist on it's own without a user account. Note also that if the mailbox is converted from user to shared, the password for the user account should be reset too.