Sean Wallbridge
This from the Office Neeter.
Deleting an Exchange 2007/2010 Mailbox WITHOUT deleting the Active Directory user account
Back in the old days, you could delete an Active Directory user account in the ADUC (Active Directory Users and Computers) console, and you would be prompted whether or not you wanted to delete or keep the mailbox. Also, in Exchange System Manager (Exchange 2003), you could ‘disconnect’ a mailbox, without having to delete the AD (Active Directory) user account. With Exchange 2007/2010, it is no longer the case. Not only ha Microsoft divided the administration into 2 consoles (ADUC AND Exchange Management Console), if you try and ‘Remove’ a mailbox in Exchange Management Console, it WILL also delete the user account.
The appropriate method now for removing a mailbox (in Exchange Management Console), but keep the AD account, is to ‘Disable’ the mailbox. Disabling the mailbox will remove Exchange attributes and disconnect the mailbox from the AD user account. The user account will remain intact in Active Directory, and the disconnected mailbox will be purged after the mailbox retention period expires.
You can also use the ‘Disable-Mailbox’ command in the ‘Exchange PowerShell’. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997210.aspx
In order to remove the mailbox before the retention period expired, I had to run:
Remove-StoreMailbox –database “DB2” –identity “Chakka Rajith” –MailboxState Disabled
Source: http://theucguy.net/purge-disconnected-or-soft-deleted/
I didn’t have to run other cmdlets as the article described to refresh the view. I just right-clicked on “Disconnected Mailbox” and Refresh. The mailbox was gone. Off to recreate it!