Delete Mailbox Without Deleting User

Account in Exchange 2013

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Bipin in Exchange Server 2013 with 2 Comments
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In Exchange 2013, if you delete a mailbox, the user associated with the mailbox in
Active Directory is also deleted. But at some point, you might just want to delete
mailbox only. So, in this post I will show steps to delete mailbox without deleting user
account in Exchange 2013.

Delete Mailbox Without Deleting User Account in

Exchange 2013
The trick is, just disable the mailbox to delete the mailbox to retain the user account.
Open Exchange Admin Center (EAC). Click recipients in the features-pane and select
mailboxes tab. Here, you can see the list of all the mailboxes configured in the Mailbox
server. Select the mailbox you want to delete, click more (…) click disable.

A warning pops up. Click Yes. The mailbox is now disabled.

The mailbox now disappears from the list. The deleted mailbox will be automatically be
deleted after the mailbox retention policy period expires. To do the same thing from
PowerShell here is the cmdlet,

Disable-Mailbox bgiri

At this point, let’s say you want to re-connect to the mailbox again. In the EAC,
navigate to same place, recipients > mailboxes. Here, click more (…), and select
connect a mailbox.
This is how you can connect back to disconnected mailbox. But for now, I won’t
connect it back. Now, to view the disconnected mailbox type following cmdlet in
Exchange Management Shell,

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database “Mailbox Database 0372376569” | where

{$_.disconnectdate -ne $null}

By default, the deleted mailbox will be stored in the database for up to 14 days. But if
you want to delete it prior then follow these steps. To delete the disabled mailbox we
need to get the GUID of the mailbox. To get the GUID of mailbox, type the following
cmdlet in EMS,

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database “Mailbox Database 0372376569” | where

{$_.disconnectdate -ne $null} | select displayname,MailboxGUID

To remove the deleted mailbox, type following cmdlet in EMS.

Remove-Mailbox -Database “Mailbox Database 0372376569” -

StoreMailboxIdentity 92d20afd-42d8-496e-9455-34b3d6cb066e

The disabled mailbox is now deleted.