turning off Azure-AD Connect

Question

Hello,

We can turn off directory synchronization as showed at

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/turn-off-directory-synchronization?view=o365-worldwide

So now once AAD-connect is cut off, all users are now cloud-only and source of authority will be CLOUD
So my question is, what happens to all the onPremises***** attributes in the user-profile ???

for eg., onPremisesDistinguishedName, onPremisesUserPrincipalName

Would they all become NULL ??

Thanks.

Answer 1

They will be untouched after you turn off the directory synchronization. From what I can see the only ones that don't have data are:

• On-premises last sync date time
• On-premises provisioning errors
• On-premises security identifier
• On-premises users principal name

Fields that have data in Azure AD/Entra (after Azure AD Connect has been turned off):

• On-premises sync enabled (set to No)
• On-premises distinguished name
• On-premises immutable ID
• on-premises SAM account name
• On-premises domain name

This is most likely a feature of if you turn Azure AD Connect back on. Additionally, I would recommend that you do not clear the immutableID unless needed. If you do this you will not be able to restore Azure AD Connect with your users on-prem.

I recently did this on a somewhat large tenant, and everything went well.

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