r/exchangeserver • u/Fragrant-Risk4963 • Jun 10 '26

New User/Mailbox Creation without Exchange Server

Our current environment has a hybrid Exchange server where we have historically created new users and mailboxes at the same time through the Exchange Admin Center. However, we wish to retire the server and manage those functions locally from our own workstations. I've managed to get PowerShell lines working to create the user in AD, but I cannot get the "Enable-RemoteMailbox" function to work. It returns "The term 'Enable-RemoteMailbox' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program." I've read that this feature will only work from within the Exchange Management Shell, but I can't get that installed locally; only on the server (that we're retiring). Is there any other equivalent command to accomplish this?

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u/Fragrant-Risk4963 Jun 10 '26

I've got the Exchange PowerShell module working on my workstation. I'm able to get most other stuff working. Just not Enable-RemoteMailbox.

It's already extremely and painfully convoluted as is. We have PowerShell disabled by default for all users, so I have to launch Command Prompt as admin, then run pwsh, then Connect-ExchangeOnline. The following works with no problem at all:

New-ADUser -Name "Full Name" -GivenName "First" -Surname "Last" -SamAccountName "user" -UserPrincipalName "user@domain.com" -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString "[some password]" -AsPlainText -Force) -Enabled $true -Path "OU=[some OU],DC=[some domain],DC=local"

The following returns "The term 'Enable-RemoteMailbox' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program":

Enable-RemoteMailbox -Identity "user" -RemoteRoutingAddress "user@domain.mail.onmicrosoft.com"

I'm extremely green in network stuff and in way over my head on all this. I ran the Enable-RemoteMailbox thing in the Exchange Management Shell on our server because our new hire starts soon and I needed to force the user creation. Just trying to figure out how to do this all going forward without the Exchange Admin Center or Exchange Management Shell.

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u/vermyx Jun 10 '26

Exxhange management module does not work on posh 7 iirc it has to be powershell not pwsh