Forum Discussion
Licensing , User Mailboxes and Reconcillation
You probably have some expired licenses, you can get a breakdown on the Products page. As for the cmdlet output, you might be using features such as holds or Archiving which DO require a license for shared/room mailboxes too.
Hey Vasil,
I was under the impression that if you did the following:
1) User has E3 license
2) You place user on Either Litigation Hold or In-Place hold
3) You remove users license
4) You remove users account from AD Connect
5) User mailbox then shows as inactive in PowerShell
The users mailbox is on litigation hold without needing a license and all data will be available per the terms of the hold. Do i have that wrong?
Thanks,
Robert
That's not the correct process, removing the license puts the mailbox in "erroneous" state. If you want to make the mailbox "inactive", you need to remove the user object without removing the license first (it will still be freed).
Thanks Vasil. It was my understanding that when you place a mailbox on hold, that you are correct, if you remove the license it will show an error in the admin center, portal, users. however once the account is removed from AD Connect the error seems to go away.
In either case based on my testing errored out or not, the mailbox still retains the data. in fact i just checked on mailboxes that were placed on hold (some show an error in the portal, others do not), and they all retained their data. These mailboxes were placed on hold on 6/5/2020.
Thanks,
Robert
The fact that it retains the data (the hold is still active) doesnt mean that the object is in the "correct" state, as it's now technically in violation of the license agreement. Microsoft made a deliberate decision not to remove any mailboxes put on hold even when no matching license is assigned in order to avoid data loss. This does not mean that you are free to use this functionality without effectively "paying" for it. Moreover, since this is not a *supported* scenario, they can change the behavior at any time. Stick to what the recommend/support.