Ability to delete mailbox when user is on hold

Copper Contributor

The exchange admin or global admin is able to delete the mailbox even if the user is on hold. Is there a way to get notified when the above scenario happens?

 

What is the recommendation or best practices from MS?

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/recipients-in-exchange-online/delete-or-restore-mailboxes

If there is any type of hold on the user mailbox the mailbox can't be removed from Exchange Online. For all mail user recipient types, Litigation hold or eDiscovery hold are ignored and have no impact on the mail users hard-deleted or soft-delete behaviour.

 

1 Reply

None of the methods described in this article will permanently delete a mailbox put on hold. Instead, the mailbox will become "inactive", but still perfectly preserved and accessible for eDiscovery.

 

The only method that can actually delete mailboxes put on hold is when you specify the IgnoreLegalHold switch:

Remove-Mailbox -PermanentlyDelete -IgnoreLegalHold

 

If you want to prevent this, you can customize your RBAC roles to remove the IgnoreLegalHold parameter, or remove the Remove-Mailbox cmdlet altogether.