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Hi. How can I delete a user's mailbox in Exchange online without deleting the user from the admin center ? Is there any way we can do that ? I know remove licensing and add it again restores the mailbox again.
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Hi @Jonathan Priyaraj,
Welcome to the Microsoft forum.
Based on your description, my understanding is that you want to delete a user's mailbox but retain its Azure AD account . Please point out any misunderstandings.
In order to achieve this,you can disable the mailbox by running the command like
Disable-Mailbox -Identity "John Woods" in Exchange Online PowerShell.
The Disable-Mailbox cmdlet removes the mailbox's Exchange attributes from Azure AD. The mailbox isn't deleted and can be reconnected to its user at a later date by using the Connect-Mailbox cmdlet. For more information please refer to: Disable-Mailbox (ExchangePowerShell) | Microsoft Learn Also,when you disable a mailbox, the Exchange attributes are removed from the corresponding Azure AD user account, but the user account is retained. Disabled and deleted mailboxes are retained in the mailbox database until the deleted mailbox retention period expires, which is 30 days by default. After the retention period expires, the mailbox is permanently deleted (also called purged).You can refer to : Disconnected mailboxes | Microsoft Learn
Hope this helps!
Hi Mike. Thanks for answering. But tell me will it create a new mailbox again when I assign the license. I do not want to wait 30 days . I want the user to have new mailbox
If you use Command Disable-Mailbox ,and assign the license,the old mailbox will reconnect to the user.
You can try to run: Get-Mailbox -Identity Laura -SoftDeletedMailbox | Remove-Mailbox -PermanentlyDelete after running Disable-Mailbox. Then the mailbox will be deleted permanently. And after you assign the license,you will get a new mailbox.
Hope this helps.
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