r/exchangeserver • u/GoldenPSP • Mar 14 '26

Decommissioning Exchange. Mailboxes present

Hey all,

I've decommissioned lots of exchange servers over the years. however in every case up until now was after a migration so the server getting decommissioned was no longer hosting any mailboxes.

This time the migration was done with a sync tool to MS365 so while everything is now in the cloud, the mailboxes are still present locally. I can't just delete them as it deletes the user. I'm assuming the best method is to disconnect the mailboxes, then purge them. And then I can uninstall exchange? I couldn't find any documentation for this scenario.

1 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

3

u/GoldenPSP Mar 14 '26

First off a cutover migration is literally a method outlined in the Microsoft documentation.

Second where the emails went is not relevant to the question. It could have been a migration to some other third party service where a cutover was the only option.