Best practice to remove exchange user and move the archive to other exchange user

[ramirez99]

Hi guys,

i would know if anyone can explain me the best pratice to remove one exchange users ( the user and mailbox must be deleted ) and move the enterprise vault archive of this mailbox to one other user.

Thanks

[GertjanA]

Do you want the mailbox of the user to be removed archived completey first, or just remove?

IF archive completely, use Quadro-Tech's tool (http://www.quadrotech-it.com/products/evtools/free/archive-leavers/) to quickly archive the whole mailbox.

Then in the archive of this mailbox, change the billingaccount to the new user, and grant the new user permissions to the archive (manually). When the new user then opens Archive Explorer, he will see the archive of the removed user.

Would that help?

[JesusWept3]

If the user you're giving the archive to isn't already enabled, you could do the enabled archive wizard and when enabling them you just tell it to use an existing archive

[Rob_Wilcox1]

The paid-for version of Archive Leavers also has the option to turn the totally-archived-archive/mailbox in to a shared archive, and to disable the user in AD (the user will also be disabled from EV archiving).

That sounds like a good plan to me :)

[ramirez99]

Thanks for the answer.

What i need is :

1) archive all the mail of a specific mail account

2) delete AD user and mailbox

3) set the EV archive to one other active AD and Exchange User.

Thanks.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

What we've described so far will help, then, I think.

[WiTSend]

In my org the following process is in place:

1)  "departed" users are put in a separate OU and permissions are stripped from the user account (automated process)

2) The OU has a provisioning group attached that archives all data from the mailbox

3) after 72 hours the account is disabled and mailbox deleted

To give access to a different user just assign them permissions to the archive in the VAC.

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

well if you wanted to do it for free, your best option is to create a Policy called "Archive everything" or something like that.

Give it a 0 day policy, archive unread items, delete original but do not create shortcuts.
specify message classes such as
A*
B*
C*
D*
E* etc so that every single item gets archived.

Have the policy set to archive deleted items, sent items, unexpired items etc so you are archiving absolutely everything, then once thats done, you can go to the mailbox and see its completely empty, so you know theres nothing left to archive.

Then you disable that user in EV, delete the mailbox in AD etc.
Then enable the other user you want to give the archive to and then in the enable mailbox wizard you specify the old users archive you just put everything to.

However the user can only have one archive only, so if they have their own personal archive, you cannot attach it, so you could either create a shared archive or export the users archive to a PST and import it in to the new users existing archive etc