How Can I Remove Calendar Events from a User Whose Account Has Been Deleted for Over 90 Days

Question

How Can I Remove Calendar Events from a User Whose Account Has Been Deleted for Over 90 Days

Maranya, Damon 326

We have a user that created a couple of calendar events that include all members of the leadership team. That employee has now left the company and just a bit over three months later they leadership team no longer needs the meetings. But none of them are an owner so they can't cancel or edit it. At this point the employee's user account has been gone for longer than the retrieval period, so removing the event with

get-calendarevents | remove-calendarevents

just returns an unknown mailbox error. The results of get-mailbox are the same. I can find the events using the Compliance search through Purview. But I can't find a way to delete them through the compliance search and I can't find a cmdlet that recognizes any attribute of the events. Does anyone have any ideas on how we might accomplish this?

Accepted answer

2 additional answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Microsoft External Staff

Hi @Maranya, Damon

Kindly note that the normal method to remove a meeting from attendees' calendars is to have the organizer cancel the meeting by sending a cancellation email.

In this case since the mailbox was deleted and not possible to restore, we may need to use Content Search or Search-Mailbox cmdlet to get and remove this event from all attendees' mailboxes.

Let's take Search-Mailbox for example.

Running the below cmdlet in Exchange Online Powershell will search all mailboxes for a meeting with subject "meeting to remove" and copy the search results (emails or calendar events) to a folder named "meeting_search" in admin's mailbox:

Get-Mailbox | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery "(Subject:'meeting to remove') AND (Kind:meetings)" -TargetMailbox "admin" -TargetFolder "meeting_search" -LogLevel Full

Once you confirmed these are the emails or events to be removed, you can run this cmdlet to remove these from the attendees' mailboxes:

Get-Mailbox | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery "(Subject:'meeting to remove') AND (Kind:meetings)" -DeleteContent -Confirm:$false

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-01-29T16:17:52.7166667+00:00

I am well aware of the recommended process for removing calendar events. But I have no control over what an employee does when they leave the company, and I am not the one responsible for deleting the account. I'm just the one that gets to pick up the pieces. As I said in my initial post, I am able to locate the meeting entries in question using the Content Search Feature on the Microsoft Purview site. But I am unable to find a way to remove the items discovered through the interface. The Search-Mailbox cmdlet returns the error you see below.

It would appear that the Search-Mailbox cmdlet is not a part of the standard ExchangeOnline PowerShell module. Is it a part of another Exchange module perhaps? One that isn't loaded automatically when a PowerShell connection to Exchange Online is made?
Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-01-29T23:51:29.8633333+00:00

This error may indicate the account you are using does not have the required permission.

You need the Mailbox Import Export role to run this cmdlet, which by default is not included in the Organization management role group.

Please access Exchange admin center>Roles>Admin Roles, create a new role group and add this role, then assign it to the admin account you are using.
Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-01-31T05:13:44.9566667+00:00

Hi @Maranya, Damon I am writing here to confirm with you how thing going now? Please let us know if you would like further assistance.
Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-01-31T17:36:12.1933333+00:00

Adding the Mailbox Import Export role has allowed the search-mailbox command to run successfully, and it has found many instances of the event. So, Thank you for that. But adding the "-DeleteContent -Confirm:$false" parameters does not remove the events. As a subsequent search returns the same number of hits.
Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-02-01T01:07:47.8333333+00:00

Thanks for the update!

But adding the "-DeleteContent -Confirm:$false" parameters does not remove the events. As a subsequent search returns the same number of hits.

Can you have a check if the meeting was deleted from the attendees' mailboxes/calendars?
Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-02-01T18:42:28.5833333+00:00

I just spoke to one of the users that has the event on their calendar, and they are still able to see it. So, it has not been removed.
Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-02-01T18:48:39.9066667+00:00

I've just spoken to one of the users with the event in question on their calendar. They are reporting that the event is still visible for them. So, the event has not been successfully deleted.
Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-02-02T01:48:03.94+00:00
Sorry I am not sure what may be the possible cause.

Below is a test in my lab, please have a check to confirm if you are using the same steps.

If yes and the events are still not removed, please create a service request to contact support for further help.

1.As user01 I created a meeting named "test meeting to remove" and invited user02 and user05 as attendees

2.user02 gets the meeting invitation email and has the meeting added to his calendar

3.run the following cmdlet in Exchange Online Powershell

Get-Mailbox | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery "(Subject:'meeting to remove') AND (Kind:meetings)" -TargetMailbox "admin" -TargetFolder "test_meeting_search" -LogLevel Full

4.check the result in the test_meeting_search folder

5.run the following cmdlet to remove the events

Get-Mailbox | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery "(Subject:'test meeting to remove') AND (Kind:meetings)" -DeleteContent -Confirm:$false

6.check in user02's mailbox, the message in inbox and the meeting in calendar are removing

check user01's sent items and calendar, the messages are also removed:

7.rerun the search cmdlet again and there is no result returned
Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-02-06T16:50:45.8166667+00:00

This is what I'm seeing when I run the detection and then cleanup scripts.
Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-02-06T23:51:16.92+00:00

Sorry but your screenshots are the search result emails rather than the event itself.

I am not sure what do you mean by that.

In the search results it shows 0 emails, which means the search did not find any related event.

Can you confirm in the mailbox which has the events you want to remove on the calendar?
Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-02-07T17:42:02.7266667+00:00

Sorry, I apparently failed to capture the positive results. But here are some images of the event still on a coworker's calendar from earlier today.
Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-02-08T06:32:23.29+00:00
Thanks for the information. From your former search result screenshot it seems the search did not find any results, as if there are results, the messages will be copied to the search folder like:

But there aren't any subfolders under the meeting_search folder in your screenshot.

The cmdlet you are running seems to be:

Get-Mailbox | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery "(Subject'Team of the Month Live Nominations and Winnder') AND (Kind:meetings)"

in this cmdlet after Subject there should should be a ":" like:

Get-Mailbox | Search-Mailbox -SearchQuery "(Subject:'Team of the Month Live Nominations and Winnder') AND (Kind:meetings)"
Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-02-08T16:07:27.95+00:00

I figured it out. The user had created two nearly identically named meetings. I'm rerunning the scripts using the newly discovered spelling. I'll let you know if that does the trick.
Kael Yao-MSFT 37,711 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2024-02-09T02:10:28.31+00:00

Glad to hear that. Please feel free to post back if there are any updates.
Maranya, Damon 326 Reputation points

2024-02-09T14:28:42.71+00:00

Well, according to both the script and the Purview content search tool, the events are gone. But according to at least three of my coworkers they are still present on their calendars. So, I guess this one gets kicked up the chain to Microsoft Support. As this may be an issue on their side of the glass. But I'm going to point them at this conversation as it may shorten the whole process significantly.

Answer 2

Deleted

This answer has been deleted due to a violation of our Code of Conduct. The answer was manually reported or identified through automated detection before action was taken. Please refer to our Code of Conduct for more information.

Comments have been turned off. Learn more

Answer 3

JOHN TREANOR 0

Thank you. I've been trying to do this but the command just hangs and nothing gets done, no output. Any ideas?

Share via

How Can I Remove Calendar Events from a User Whose Account Has Been Deleted for Over 90 Days

2 additional answers

Your answer