Disabling email delivery for an Exchange account, without deleting the mailbox

Had an interesting scenario/question today. A customer asked how to disable a users account and incoming email/mailbox. Normally, if the account was going to be destroyed we would disconnect the mailbox and let it die. However, our scenario is different. Someone is going away on sick leave (undetermined time frame) and the customer doesn’t want their mailbox filled up with junk while they are gone. Typically, we would probably ‘forward’ the email to another employee who is covering for them and tick the box that says “do not store a copy on forward locally” – but that won’t work.

So we are assuming these are the business requirements

1. Keep the mailbox alive
2. Not have it store any new emails until her return
3. Not forward her emails to someone else that is ‘covering’ for her

Here’s how we worked around this

1. Under the properties of the mailbox, check “hide from distribution group”
2. Set prohibit send/receive on the account to 0kb (so it can’t receive new emails from internal staff, for external, just change her SMTP address … note, there will be NDR’s if people send)
3. Disable AD account, if desired (to prevent login)