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BorislavVitanov-1003 asked

Old/Previous users Exchange Online

Hello everyone,
We are currently with Exchange 2016 but in a process of migrating to Exchange Online or implementing Hybrid at first. We are using already Office365. As part of it, I have to think about some cases which happened by us:
- an employee worked for us, then left the company and after 1-2 years or shorter return back

With Exchange 2016, if I create the user with the same e-mail address and mailNickname (Alias) the only thing to fix is to add manually an X500 address and everything is back to normal (of course some users have to delete their outlook cache but nothing serious).

Is there any issue with Exchange Online if the user is created with the same information as before? Something like this to expect and how to solve it?

  • an employee got married and change his name - on premises, we already had such cases but as Exchange Online is connected with the user e-mail, I wonder how this will result? The user will use his new e-mail address but will keep the access to his old e-mail address or loose it? He will occupy 2 licenses?

Thanks in advance

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michev avatar image
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michev answered BorislavVitanov-1003 commented

Those are two different scenarios. Renaming users is easy, you can add his new address as primary and keep the old one as secondary, without needing any additional licenses or such. Do note that if you will be changing the UserPrincipalName as well, this will change how the user logs in to the service, so make sure to inform him accordingly.
As for creating a user with the same attributes, it depends on what happened with the previous one. Generally speaking, if you delete an Exchange Online user or remove the license, data will be lost after 30 days and recreating the user will result in a brand new, empty mailbox. The name cache situation is the same as with on-premises.
In some cases (a soft-deleted mailbox still exists), a conflict will occur and Exchange Online will not allow you to use the same attributes as the old mailbox still exists. Again, depends on the details, as you can have scenarios such as inactive mailboxes in the mix too, and so on.

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Hi @michev
Thanks for the information. In general, we don't have much such cases but it happens that a trainee by us appear in a year or so to continue with his bachelor thesis or similar. This is longer than 30 days and usually we delete the user account completely one week after he leaves. In this case, then we have to keep in mind to delete completely a user mailbox in Exchange Online to avoid further issues.
Good to know that there will be no need of 2 licenses if we change the user e-mail address.
Thanks

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