Forum Discussion

Iron Contributor

Nov 30, 2017

Solved

Exchange Online Shared Mailboxes deleted after deleting disabled users from local AD

We have Office 365 Business Premium and user Azure AD Connect to sync our local AD. Today we planned to delete 12 disabled user accounts from our Active Directory. I went to Exchange Online and con...

Azure AD

exchange

BenStegink
Nov 30, 2017
Here is the support article from Microsoft outlining what you were trying to do (with the warning not to delete the user) as well as the steps to recover if you did delete the user - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Convert-a-user-mailbox-to-a-shared-mailbox-2e122487-e1f5-4f26-ba41-5689249d93ba

I'm also not aware of it being a license violation based on everything I've seen on the topic. I know all the users that access the shared mailbox must have a license, but not aware of any violations of using a shared mailbox to preserve a mailbox, especially if you need to continue receiving email to said mailbox. Here is another good article on the topic as well https://practical365.com/exchange-online/shared-mailboxes-vs-inactive-mailboxes-departed-users/. Still doing some looking into the licensing issue, so I'll update the thread as well if I can find any more details around it.

Joe Stocker

Bronze Contributor

Nov 30, 2017

The behavior is intended because by converting a mailbox to a shared mailbox, that in itself does not disassociate it from the original AD object.

You should also be aware that converting a former employee to a shared mailbox is a license violation.

You should instead convert it to an inactive mailbox, read the article here for more info:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Overview-of-inactive-mailboxes-in-Office-365-1fbd74e8-7a60-4157-afe8-fe79f05d2038

DanielNiccoli

Iron Contributor

Nov 30, 2017

I have no knowledge of it being a license violation. If it really is a violation, I would be interested where I could read up on that. The only information I have is this:

"Your shared mailbox can store up to 50GB of data without you assigning a license to it. After that, you need to assign a license to the mailbox to store more data."
Source: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-shared-mailbox-871a246d-3acd-4bba-948e-5de8be0544c9

I also remember that I have a couple of shared mailboxes from 2015 and 2016 where I did exactly this: Convert to shared mailbox and delete the user account.

Inactive mailboxes are not an option for as as our employees still need access to their mailboxes and folder structure. And frankly, I don't see why I should pay for something like that.