Forum Discussion

Dan_A1's avatar
Dan_A1
Level 4
6 years ago

Verify all items are archived before disabling and deleting mailbox

We have several mailboxes of employees that are no longer with the company and we would like to delete those mailboxes from the Exchange server and remove the users object from Active Directory.

How do we verify that all messages are archived?

Is there a documented process on how to perform this task when a employee leaves the company?

 

 

 

  • GertjanA's avatar
    GertjanA
    Moderator
    6 years ago

    Hello Dan,

    I am not sure there is a documented way, couldnot find it quick. Below is what I used to do in the past:

    Create a mailbox archiving policy, call it 0dayarchiving. Set the Archiving Rules to Archive based on age, archive items when older than 0 days. Decide if you also want to archive Deleted and Draft items (set required value in Advanced tab). Set Archiving Actions to Delete item after archiving, select archive unread items. DESELECT Create shortcut. If you really want everything, then in messageclasses tab, select all messageclasses. Then tab shortcut deletion, set Delete shortcuts after 1 day, and delete orphaned shortcuts. OPTIONAL: create a desktop policy, uncheck all in the Options tab.

    Create a Provisioning Group, assign the 0dayarchiving mailbox policy (and optionally the desktop one). Set the PG to top of the list (rightclick Provisioning Groups in Console, properties, then use Move Up to move the PG to the number 1). Define how to select moved users (on account bases, put them in a group or a DL). Define that selection to the PG.

    Run provisioning. Sync mailboxes from the Mailbox Archiving task. Run mailbox archiving task manually. It might be you need to run it several times to clear out a mailbox.

    Eventually, the mailboxes should be empty. To verify, you can either export the mailbox to a PST, and examine that in Outlook (rightclick, properties, advanced, foldersize), or open the mailbox using the VSA, and examine it from there. If you do an item count using Exchange Powershell, be advised you will have at least 3, and possibly 10 items. These are the EV hidden messages, which don't archive.

    When mailbox is empty, disable the mailbox for archiving in EV. Then delete mailbox/account