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.
Some more details.
You have a mailbox with litigation hold enabled.
You remove the license from the mailbox. The mailbox now becomes a candidate to be an inactive mailbox once its account is removed from Office 365.
Because the account is now unlicensed, Office 365 gives the tenant a 30-day grace period to license it. During this time, the mailbox is active and can receive email.
When the 30-day period elapses, background processes kick in and will find the unlicensed mailbox. At this point, the mailbox is either permanently removed or moved to an inactive state, depending on if holds exist.
You can force the process along by explicitly removing mailboxes or accounts. The grace period exists to allow tenants to recover from admin errors.
Once the mailbox is inactive, it can be recovered or restored.
Anthony LeongI've just seen this thread and wanted to let you know about a way round losing a mailbox after losing licence. Basically you convert the mailbox to a Shared Mailbox and this will then maintain the mailbox for as long as you have the underlying AD identity. Similarly, if you have retention perdiods set for Exchange, the actual content of the mailbox will be retained (without the structure). What some customers do is keep all disabled AD accounts for 6 months after which they are all deleted (some keep them forever), if the mailbox has been converted to Shared then this will stay around until the AD account is deleted (so 6 months).
I hope this makes sense.
Anthony Leong If a retention policy is in force to keep items for five months, it will lapse after that period and any inactive mailboxes will be removed (if no other holds apply to the mailboxes).
Are there any methods that allow you to remove the licenses and have the mailbox content available for recovery for a set time (let's say 5 months) and if not recovered its just auto-deleted?
Anthony Leong If you remove litigation hold from an inactive mailbox and that hold is the only one applying to the mailbox, then the mailbox can be deleted by Exchange and will be removed by a background process.
So how does litigation hold work in terms of the duration you set?
For instance, you disable CAS settings for a mailbox, remove the license, Litigation hold is enabled.
After 30 days it becomes inactive, let's say you set the litigation hold duration for 60 days.
Does the mailbox get removed from inactive mailbox section after 60days or does it just say inactive till the hold is disabled?robshin Yep. The 30-day period is a legal/licensing condition. The exact time when a mailbox becomes inactive depends on when it is processed. I've seen this take longer.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/create-and-manage-inactive-mailboxes is also a good read.
- This is interesting, so you think without a license assigned the mailbox will eventually become inactive. A customer of mine has unlicensed mailboxes still active after 40+ days.
6. Remove and delete the Office 365 license from a former employee When you remove a license, you can assign it to someone else. Or, you can delete the license so you don't pay for it until you hire another person.
When you remove or delete a license, the user's old email, contacts, and calendar are retained for 30 days, then permanently deleted. If you remove or delete a license but don't delete the account, the content in the user's OneDrive will remain accessible to you even after 30 days.robshin If the mailbox is inactive, it can be restored or recovered.
Re. Assuming lit-hold is enabled, If you do not remove the account, but remove the license, then after 30 days the mailbox is not flagged as inactive and remains in its current state.
Eventually EXO will detect the lack of license and move the mailbox to an inactive state to respect the hold. The 30 days period is not exact as the background processes run when service load permits. It might be 30 days; then again it might be longer.
