Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

May 22, 2020

Solved

Recreate a mailbox for an existing user?

Here's what I'd like to do: A mail user is created an assigned a license at some point. The user may have been synchronized from on-prem or may have been created directly in Azure AD. At a later p...

admin

exchange

office 365

PeterRising
May 23, 2020
chad512

OK, maybe a little fiddly and messy, but how about enabling the Online Archive for the mailboxes in this situation and then create a new Exchange Retention Policy In the Exchange Admin Center to move content to the archive which is older than 14 days (along the lines of the below). Assign this new retention policy only to the users who's mailboxes you want to clear out.

Once the move to archive has completed, disable the Online Archive for that user (making sure that you don't re-enable it for at least 30 days or the content will return). Then, make sure you assign the default retention policy back to that user.

You'd have to be very diligent about assigning this temporary policy. It could just as easily get you into trouble if assigned incorrectly. If you plan to give it a try, test it to the hilt first I would say.

PeterRising

MVP

May 23, 2020

chad512

Hi, you should be able to achieve this by purging the Deleted Users folder as you have indicated. To do this, connect to Powershell as follows;

Connect-MsolService

Get-MsolUser -MaxResults 60 -ReturnDeletedUsers | Remove-MsolUser -RemoveFromRecycleBin -Force

When recreating and licensing the user, you will now have a nice blank mailbox.

chad512
Copper Contributor
May 23, 2020
My goal is to not recreate the user, though. I want the user object left as it is, but I want to recreate that user's mailbox.
- PeterRising
  MVP
  May 23, 2020
  Ah I get it. Only way I can see this working is if the user was synced from AD. Process would be:
  
  1). Move the user in AD to an OU which is not synced.
  2). Wait for/or force ad sync. The O365 user will be moved to deleted users folder.
  3). Run the PowerShell to purge Deleted users
  4). Move the AD user back to synced OU, run sync, and the user is recreated for you.
  5). Assign licence. Good to go.
  
  Maybe still not exactly what you want, but I think it is as good as you are going to get.
  - David_Drake345
    Copper Contributor
    May 05, 2021
    Thanks Peter, this saved me during a migration in which a users In-Place Archive filled up because of a misconfiguration with the retention policy and I was able to blow out the mailbox and restart the migration. You rock man! Thanks!