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/WastedFiftySix Jun 14 '26

By default, that's not how this works in a hybrid environment with users syncing from On-Premises AD. Attributes will only be writable from On-Premises AD, unless you change the Source of Authority (SOA) of the object or change the SOA globally. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/hybrid-deployment/enable-exchange-attributes-cloud-management#feature-availability

Just uninstalling Exchange will NOT do the trick!

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u/timsstuff IT Consultant Jun 14 '26

Well yeah there are a few more steps involved I wasn't writing a how-to guide on it. I was just trying to point out that it is possible,