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.
It's often the case in migration scenarios that users are provisioned in the service before their mail is migrated, so they start using things like OneDrive and SharePoint long before the mail switch. Migration testing may push data into the service mailbox that we want to purge before the actual migration. Recreating the user would mean the user loses all of their accumulated non-mail data.
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.
- I'll give it a shot. Thanks!