force purge of disconnected mailboxes

w^rl0rd

Is there a way to force the disconnected mailboxes to delete without removing the associated AD user account?

From what I have read so far, the remove-mailbox cmdlet can be used but it also gets rid of the AD user account which we do not want.

royal

The remove-mailbox command only gets rid of the account if the Exchange Admin account you're using is also an AD administrator with privileges to remove the account.

I've had to do this before and used the following page with example commands (which do include purging disconnected mailboxes):
http://www.exchangeninjas.com/Remove-Mailbox
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232039(EXCHG.80).aspx

I don't know of a way to do this via disable-mailbox as there's no documentation on how to do this with disable-mailbox.

Again, you could create an Exchange Admin account and leave it in only the Domain Users group.

Test this out before doing it with production mailboxes/user accounts!

CoryS

Similar to Royals post, this ones a bit easier to read (at least for guys who are highlight crazy like me lol)... I have used this in the past and it works well.

http://msmvps.com/blogs/andersonpatricio/archive/2007/10/08/removing-disconnected-mailboxes-in-exchange-server-2007.aspx

HeroPsycho

DOH! Beat me to the PowerShell punch!

Claymoore

Can't you just use Active Directory Users and Computers, right-click on the account, select Exchange Tasks, and then Delete Mailbox?

It's an available option in 2003, but I don't know if it works in 2007.

shednik

Claymoore wrote:

Can't you just use Active Directory Users and Computers, right-click on the account, select Exchange Tasks, and then Delete Mailbox?

It's an available option in 2003, but I don't know if it works in 2007.

Thats was my thoughts as well and then you can let Exchange delete it on its own once it's clean up agent runs or you can manually purge it specifically if you need to save space on your store. Unless I'm misunderstanding what the original question was.

HeroPsycho

Claymoore wrote:

Can't you just use Active Directory Users and Computers, right-click on the account, select Exchange Tasks, and then Delete Mailbox?

It's an available option in 2003, but I don't know if it works in 2007.

ADUC isn't Exchange integrated anymore with E2K7.

blargoe

It's very bad to do that to E2K7 mailboxes using ADUC

HeroPsycho

Correct. As a general rule, use E2K3 tools to manage E2K3 mailboxes (ADUC + ESM), and use E2K7 tools to manage E2K7 mailboxes (EMC/EMS).

dumontr

w^rl0rd wrote: »

Is there a way to force the disconnected mailboxes to delete without removing the associated AD user account?

From what I have read so far, the remove-mailbox cmdlet can be used but it also gets rid of the AD user account which we do not want.

go to stores right click on mailboxes and run clean up agent...then right click the stores and on the limit tab change the limits to 0 and then run the cleanup agent again it will remove the mail boxes

Claymoore

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that, at some point in the last 4.5 years, this situation was resolved.

I know I have learned a little bit about the Exchange management tools since then

undomiel

Pretty interesting to see how far you have come since then though.

cyberguypr

Priceless respawn.