Forum Discussion
Recreate a mailbox for an existing user?
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.
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.
