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texan_gerbil

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SBS 2008 migration wizard created Exchange mailboxes for users that didn't have them previously

Recently migrated from SBS2003 to SBS 2008 and am now working through all the bits and pieces tidying up.
We have a number of user accounts which do not have or need mailboxes.
During the migration, the wizard in its wizdom seems to have created mailboxes for all these accounts. Is this a standard "feature" of the migration wizard?

Just wanted to check that there's no problem with going into Exchange Management Console and deleting the mailboxes for these users? Anything else I need to consider?
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Radhakrishnan
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Are you using any other exchange apart from this? Which mail server you are using? How users are authenticating with active directory if they are not using this account.
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texan_gerbil

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This is the only Exchange/AD box on the network. It's standard SBS 2008 so has Exchange 2007 (currently SP1). I still want the user accounts, just don't need mailboxes - they're purely for authentication of external users on a sharepoint site.

One more thing - WSS_Search also has a mailbox - does it by default or should this be removed too?
While creating the User accounts..it will ask for creating mail boxes also, If you dont need the mail boxes then dont create it....Yes..You can delete the mail boxes...First delete one mail box and check upto 2 - 3 hours...If the same user is able to working fine without any issue, you can delete others too.
If you remove WSS Search - you may not able to search Sharepoint database
 
For clarity, I wasn't creating these accounts, they had already been created on SBS2003 without mailboxes. They were migrated to SBS 2008 as part of the migration wizard and now they do have mailboxes, so the wizard must have created them.

Anyway -
I have deleted a mailbox (or so I thought) in the following way:

in EMC, under Microsoft Exchange - Recipient Configuration - Mailbox - there are a list of users in the main pane, all with recipient type details User Mailbox. I right-click a user name and click Remove.

The user has also disappeared from ADUC, and I had to recreate it so it appears that the entire user account is removed by this method, not just the mailbox.
Apologies for my ignorance but Is this not the correct way to delete a mailbox?
No..This is not the way to remove the mail boxes...Go to EMC - Servers- expand your server name - First storage group - Mail box store (your server) - Mailboxes....Select the user whome you want to remove the mail box..Right click and select exchange task and Next--and delete mail box.
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Andrew Oakeley
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RadhaKrishnan2007, I'm afraid I can't relate your instructions to what I see in EMC, but thanks for  your input.
aoakeley, many thanks for that link - that explains exactly what I needed to know. I have disabled the mailboxes in EMC and they are sat in the disconnected mailbox list ready for deletion.

It does seem somewhat bizarre to me that it is possible to completely delete a user from within EMC - I would have expected that EMC only dealt with exchange and ADUC would be the place to delete the whole user. Still, nothing better than getting burned to learn not to do it again.
Looks like I'm up against a fairly steep learning curve moving from SBS 2003 which seems to have been rather more straightforward.
I think everyone who has upgraded to Exchange 2007 or above has deleted a user when deleting a mailbox once. Thankfully my once was with a test account :) Glad to help