Monthly Archives: October 2013

How to remove deleted users and mailboxes from Office 365

 

I recently had an instance where there was an on premise and cloud mailbox for the same user.  Accidentally after a DirSync the Exchange Online license was checked prior to initiating the mailbox migration to Office 365 from on premise.  Unchecking the checkbox results in a 30 day wait for Microsoft to permanently delete the mailbox.

See this article for more information – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn186233(v=exchg.150).aspx

When a mailbox is deleted, Exchange Online retains its contents for 30 days, by default. After 30 days, the mailbox is permanently deleted and is not recoverable.

So instead of waiting the 30 day period you can purge the Office 365 user mailbox with some powershell commands.  This even works with DirSync.

First you need to install the Windows Azure AD Module – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj151815.aspx

Then from the Windows Azure powershell (run in administrator mode).

$msolcred = get-credential
connect-msolservice -credential $msolcred
Remove-MsolUser –UserPrincipalName user@domain.com
Get-MsolUser -ReturnDeletedUsers | Remove-MsolUser –RemoveFromRecycleBin –Force

Then run another DirSync to get using the ‘start-onlinecoexistsync’ from powershell or wait the 3 hours for the synchronization to happen.

Installing vSphere client on Windows 8.1

The installation of file,VMware-viclient.exe, keeps crashing during installation on Windows 8.1.  This was caused by not having the .NET Framework x3.5 installed.

From this article – http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1_pr-networking/when-installing-the-vmware-vsphere-51-client-i-get/8cfa9152-fb46-432e-99f3-3ba3558f3845 – near the bottom

 
The cause of issue is that the .NET framework v3.5 is not installed in Windows 8 by default, and is a required component for the vSphere client.  I assume that the redistributable is packaged with the vSphere client installer, but it doesn’t work in Windows 8.1.

“The .NET Framework v3.5 is easy to install, just issue the following command from an elevated/administrator command prompt:

Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3 /All /Source:F:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess

(replace F:\ with the DVD drive where your Windows 8.1 is located.  If your DVD drive is as slow as mine, just copy the ISO to your hard drive, mount it with daemon-tools, and use that location instead.)

After that, the vSphere client happily installed and I’m off to play with Windows 8.1 now.”

 

Worked for me also.