Forum Discussion
Removing license from user, what gets removed and how quickly (returing staff member)
Well, you've got to be able to place a hold on a mailbox before it can become inactive, so that means E3 or better.
If you think someone will return, you should put their account on hold before you remove the license. As long as the hold remains in place, the data will stay inside Office 365 as the workloads do not remove information when a hold exists. The Exchange mailbox will be an "inactive mailbox" during this time. This approach is often used by companies to keep information for extended periods while they figure out a) if they need any of the data owned by a "leaver" account or b) if someone should take over the old resources.
TR
By saying "put their account on hold before you remove the license", what operation we should do exactly? There's no such operation called "put ... on hold", right?
A mailbox is put on hold by applying a legal or in-place hold to the mailbox. You can do this with an Exchange hold or an Office 365 hold. Either works.
Thanks Tony! May I confirm if this feature applies to O365 E1? Or it requires higher level E3/5?
Well, you've got to be able to place a hold on a mailbox before it can become inactive, so that means E3 or better.
I have found litigation in-place hold option (either via EAC or in Office 365 admin center > Mail settings). So, if i apply such hold and remove a license it still should be there? Actually in my case we only need for the automatic reply to work for 2 weeks after leave. Wonder if it will work during such hold and if license is removed.
If you apply a hold (litigation or retention) to a mailbox and remove the license from the account, Exchange will then try to remove the mailbox because it's now unlicensed. It will discover that a hold is in place and will therefore make the mailbox inactive. If you remove the hold, the mailbox will be removed. The autoreply won't work for an inactive mailbox (it is inactive), AFAIK.
In my tests i have seen old mailbox being preserved a month or so after a license removal for an old users. But when i tried to create a fresh AD user synced it, assigned a license, sent a few emails to it, then removed the license, in that case mailbox disappeared very quickly and assigning a license again resulted in a fresh mailbox. It was a year or so ago. I advice to do testing no matter what docs are saying. We also keep license assigned for a few weeks after the leave.
