Handling User Accounts Once a Person Leaves the Company

Handling User Accounts Once a Person Leaves the Company

This is a simplified version of our current process when an employee leaves the company.

• Convert mailbox to a shared mailbox.
• Invite members to shared mailbox.
• Confirm they have access to the shared mailbox.
• Remove Office license from the shared mailbox.

We never deleted the user from the Active Users tab in the admin console. It was never an issue until now that we are using Teams. Now, those accounts without licenses appear when inviting members to teams.

For example, inviting John Smith users will see John Doe (deleted) and John Smith  as they start to type John’s name. It appears the only way to remedy this situation is to delete the account in the list of active users.

Can someone please confirm I understand this correctly?

• After reading Microsoft’s article Convert a user mailbox to a shared mailbox, the user account is nothing more than a pointer to the shared mailbox.
• When you delete the user account the shared mailbox with the data remains.
• The shared mailbox with the data will remain until you decide to delete it.
• Although the data in the shared mailbox remains, it will no longer be able to accept incoming messages or send auto responses.

Thank you!