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How to Remove office 365 mailbox without deleting user account

May 31, 2022 at 11:42 am 2 comments

We were planning to deploy an Exchange Hybrid Configuration with On-Premise Exchange 2019 servers. Thereafter , we will be moving some of the mailboxes to On-Premise Exchange
Servers and disable only the Exchange Online mailbox to keep the user account intact with the license so he could use other Applications (like SharePoint Online , OneDrive and Desktop Apps ,etc).
The environment is already synced via Azure AD Connect.

Since the Exchange Online license is assigned to the user , the user could have one mailbox in Office 365 and one in an on-premises Exchange ,causing mail delivery issues . Thus , to solve the issue
we need to

1) Remove the Exchange Online License for the user.
2) Clear the mailbox info:
Set-User user@tga.gov.sa -PermanentlyClearPreviousMailboxInfo
3) Resync and Ensure the MSExchangeGuid is Synced to point that now the Mailbox is in On-Premise Server.
4) Re-assign the Exchange Online License in O365.
5) Now the user will not be having a mailbox , But, he will be able to access the SharepointOnline , OneDrive , the DesktopApps , etc.

OR , we could use the below steps as well (Recommended by the MS Support)

– Migrate the O365 mailbox to On-Premise Exchange Server.
– Go to the License & Apps under the User property in O365 portal.
– Unselect the Exchange Online (Plan 2) from the Apps list.
– This will ensure that the user mailbox is only in On-Premise Exchange Server and still he will be able to access the SharepointOnline, OneDrive and DesktopApp ,etc)

Entry filed under: Exchange and O365. Tags: exchange hybrid, license, o365 mailbox.