Staff member leaves - what to do with their mailbox?

[Ed Kenworthy]

I am just wondering the best way to handle staff leavers' email accounts. 

What I would like to do is convert the users mailbox to a shared mail so that I can then share it with whoever needs to view the users emails. 

I would also like to stop emails being delivered to that mailbox and redirect them to a general mailbox so if any emails are sent to the old staff member they wont get missed.

Maybe this isnt the correct way to approach this situation. 

The part I am struggling with is removing the old staff members email address from the shared mailbox so I can add it as an alias of the general mailbox. I have tried deleting the address via the gui and using powershell and the address just comes back. I have tried changing the address by adding .old to the end (e.g staff.member@company.com to staff.member.old@company.com) but after saving the change does hold but it automatically adds another address of  staff.member@company.com.

Until I can remove the address I cant add it as an alias of the general mailbox.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[#2]

Have you seen these steps listed here, or is that what you are already following with step 2 - Remove a former employee from Office 365.  More details here - Convert a user mailbox to a shared mailbox.

Also, there is an option to preserve the user's mailbox if needed for compliance - Overview of inactive mailboxes in Office 365, which means the user account can be deleted subsequently.

[#3]

you can try below exchange PowerShell script and it will stop automatic creating  aliases value 

Set-Mailbox -Identity Username -EmailAddresses SMTP:staff.member.old@Company.com

[#4]

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@Ed Kenworthy wrote:

I am just wondering the best way to handle staff leavers' email accounts.

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@Ed Kenworthy wrote:

I am just wondering the best way to handle staff leavers' email accounts. 

What I would like to do is convert the users mailbox to a shared mail so that I can then share it with whoever needs to view the users emails. 

I would also like to stop emails being delivered to that mailbox and redirect them to a general mailbox so if any emails are sent to the old staff member they wont get missed.

Maybe this isnt the correct way to approach this situation. 

The part I am struggling with is removing the old staff members email address from the shared mailbox so I can add it as an alias of the general mailbox. I have tried deleting the address via the gui and using powershell and the address just comes back. I have tried changing the address by adding .old to the end (e.g staff.member@company.com to staff.member.old@company.com) but after saving the change does hold but it automatically adds another address of  staff.member@company.com.

Until I can remove the address I cant add it as an alias of the general mailbox.

Any advice would be appreciated.

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I would also like to stop emails being delivered to that mailbox and redirect them to a general mailbox so if any emails are sent to the old staff member they wont get missed.

Maybe this isnt the correct way to approach this situation. 

The part I am struggling with is removing the old staff members email address from the shared mailbox so I can add it as an alias of the general mailbox. I have tried deleting the address via the gui and using powershell and the address just comes back. I have tried changing the address by adding .old to the end (e.g staff.member@company.com to staff.member.old@company.com) but after saving the change does hold but it automatically adds another address of  staff.member@company.com.

The proper way is to Reset the password. Convert the mailbox to a shared mailbox. Or, keep as an User Mailbox and tag it with a litigation hold to preserve the content in the mailbox.

For the Smtp address issue. I've seen this in Exchange 2013. Try moving the mailbox a different database (New-MoveRequest smtp@address.com). Once that's completed, try again. If you're hosting your own  Exchange server. Checked the AD Object for ligering smtp values. You can always setup a transport rule to distribute the email sent to that smtp address to the respected recipients.

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[#5]

Do you sync your local Active Directory with Azure AD Connect?