We ended contracts with several employees and want to remove their paid Microsoft Exchange licenses without losing messages sent to their old addresses. Forwarding works while the accounts are licensed, but stops as soon as the licenses are removed. The user accounts and addresses have not been deleted. What is the correct way to keep receiving or redirecting mail without paying for a full license for each former employee?
4 Answers
If you don't need to retain the old mailbox, remove the former address from its original account and assign it as an alias to another mailbox. Mail sent to that address will then arrive in the new mailbox. For multiple recipients, assign the address to a distribution list instead.
Be careful with former employees' addresses and mail. Depending on your jurisdiction and company policies, forwarding messages—especially addresses containing a person's name—may create privacy, retention, or compliance issues. Make sure the arrangement is documented and authorized before routing the mail elsewhere.
The usual approach is to convert each mailbox to a shared mailbox before removing the license. Then grant the appropriate staff access to it, or configure forwarding for the shared mailbox. Shared mailboxes generally don't require a license when they stay within Microsoft's size and feature limits.
You can also create an Exchange mail-flow rule that redirects messages at the transport level, before Exchange tries to deliver them to the unlicensed mailbox. Removing a license disables the mailbox and its mailbox-level rules, so a rule attached to the old account will no longer work.
This also preserves the existing mailbox contents, unlike simply moving the old address to another user.