How to Permanently Delete Mailbox in Office 365 – Two Easy Methods

Many organizations might need to delete their Office 365 mailboxes due to many possible reasons. Some of them may face the problem of huge data size and some may of data complexity. Now here the question arises i.e. How to delete mailbox from Office 365? Can we reuse these mailboxes in future? If yes! How can we achieve the same? Well, this blog will help you sustain answers for all these questions.

You can perform the deletion of mailboxes either by using Office 365 Admin center or by executing Windows PowerShell commands. Both procedures consist of different steps. So, it is advised to understand both the techniques before opting for any one of them.

User Query: “We have some user mailboxes in Office 365 that we want to delete. Those mailboxes have decent data, and the data is critical. So, we are planning to permanently remove mailboxes in Office 365 and allocate their licenses to new users. Can anyone please let us know how we can do this and utilize those licenses with new users!”

Important Note: If you are planning to remove user mailboxes from Office 365, then it is suggested to take a backup first for those accounts. The mailbox’s data can be stored on local system in PST, EML or MSG format and can be used in future if required. You can use third-party application to backup Office 365 mailboxes to PST in simple steps. There are category and date-based filters as well to save only crucial data in local system.

Download Now
Buy Now

How to Delete Office 365 Mailbox with the Help of Admin Center?

This method is the simplest way to delete a user mailbox from Office 365 cloud.

If any user is deleted from the O365 account, then its corresponding mailbox also gets deleted. Then, the deleted user is listed in Deleted Users section. This mailbox can be recovered within 30 days of deletion which is its retention policy. Once the 30 days period is over, the user mailbox is removed from Deleted Users section as well and it is permanently deleted.

Steps to Delete Mailbox from Office 365:

• Log into Office 365 Admin account and click on Admin option.

• Navigate to Users >> Active Users. Search the users that you wish to remove.
• Select that user and click on Delete User option.

The above section explains the steps to remove mailboxes from Office 365 cloud. You can follow the same steps and delete all the user mailboxes one by one.

Once you are done with this, you can implement these steps to remove its license and stop paying for that deleted mailbox. For that, go to Office 365 Admin panel and then click on Billing >> Subscriptions. Here, choose the Subscription >> Add/Remove licenses to remove the license assigned to that mailbox.

How to Delete Mailbox from Office 365 Using PowerShell Commands?

Another option to remove user mailbox is with the help of PowerShell commands.

• For that, you have to connect Windows PowerShell with O365 account.

• Once you execute this command, a pop up appears. Here, you have to enter the Office 365 credentials and press OK.
• Now, execute the following command to establish connection:

• In the next step, run this command:

• Remove mailbox using following command:

• You can also check the user mailbox residing in Deleted Users Folder.

• Implement the below command if you want to permanently delete mailbox from Office 365 cloud.

Also Read: How Long Does Office 365 Keep Deleted Emails

Conclusion

Old and obsolete user mailboxes are not always desirable and must be deleted properly. In this write-up, we have mentioned two easy ways to delete mailbox from Office 365. Users can perform these steps in the same order, and they can successfully remove these user mailboxes. However, it is recommended to take a backup of the accounts before deleting them as data is extremely important for users. A third-party application for the same is also suggested in the above section.