All, I've working on a procedure to close old employee mailboxes from Exchange. My goal is to allow for forwarding of new messages, archive the mailbox if it's ever needed in the future, and remove the mailbox from the datastore. I can't find a good solution to do this. Ex-employee scenario: A sales guy who has worked for the company forever. Clients email him directly for orders, etc (Important email to the company.) Sales guy's mailbox is 2GB. Sales guy leaves company. I disable AD account and start forwarding his email to the sales manager. Pretty typical. Now, I don't want to keep his 2GB mailbox on my server forever. Datastore size is getting bigger, I have to back it up every night, transfer to tape, etc. So, I can export the mailbox to PST for archiving. But what do I do about the mail forward if I 'disable' the mailbox and disable the AD account? I'd like to create an 'email forward' for the sales guy, but not have to keep his large 2GB mailbox in the database? Plus his AD account, though disabled, still exists and is first.last- the same as his email address. I can't create a mail contact because it's forwarding to an internal address. I've looked at SMTP email addresses in either distribution groups or the sales managers email account, but each user has like 12 email addresses! (3 domains plus first.last, flast, etc.) I'd have to type in a lot of email addresses to do that. Does anyone have a business-friendly way to do this? Thanks

Hi Why dont use just forward messages and NOT leave a copy on the sales guy who has left the company? Or you liek you say, archive all the mailbox and then remove the mailbox and then assign the old sales guys email addresses to the sales manager account? Sukh

On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:14:20 +0000, Criterion Brock wrote: >I've working on a procedure to close old employee mailboxes from Exchange. My goal is to allow for forwarding of new messages, archive the mailbox if it's ever needed in the future, and remove the mailbox from the datastore. I can't find a good solution to do this. > >Ex-employee scenario: A sales guy who has worked for the company forever. Clients email him directly for orders, etc (Important email to the company.) Sales guy's mailbox is 2GB. Sales guy leaves company. I disable AD account and start forwarding his email to the sales manager. Pretty typical. Now, I don't want to keep his 2GB mailbox on my server forever. Datastore size is getting bigger, I have to back it up every night, transfer to tape, etc. > >So, I can export the mailbox to PST for archiving. But what do I do about the mail forward if I 'disable' the mailbox and disable the AD account? I'd like to create an 'email forward' for the sales guy, but not have to keep his large 2GB mailbox in the database? Plus his AD account, though disabled, still exists and is first.last- the same as his email address. > >I can't create a mail contact because it's forwarding to an internal address. I've looked at SMTP email addresses in either distribution groups or the sales managers email account, but each user has like 12 email addresses! (3 domains plus first.last, flast, etc.) I'd have to type in a lot of email addresses to do that. > >Does anyone have a business-friendly way to do this? Add the "sales guy's" SMTP address to the sales manager's mailbox. No need to forward anything, no need to keep the account either. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

I guess that's what I will have to do.

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