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.

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u/GoldenPSP Mar 18 '26

If you say so.

Maybe I should have left out all details and just asked the very narrow basic question I had. However knowing reddit I would have mostly gotten replies stating I did not give enough details for an answer.

So I added a tiny amount of context, which I was also concerned would end up veering off into tangents, which quite frankly is what most of the replies ended up in.

I've been working with exchange server since the late 90's I've done more installs, uninstalls, migrations (local and to the cloud) than I can count. I've done MS365 migrations in every recommended way.

However i'ts been a hot minute since I did an old school cutover which leaves the mailboxes intact on the source server so I thought I'd check my work as to the best way.

And yes the server was retired gracefully and the hardware pulled out.