How to Remove an Exchange 2007 Organization

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3

This topic describes how to use the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Setup wizard or the Setup.com command to completely remove Exchange 2007 from your organization.

Completely removing Exchange 2007 from your organization includes removing Exchange from all servers in the organization.

After you remove Exchange 2007 from the last server in your Exchange organization, you will have some Exchange data and settings that are not removed. For example, removing Exchange from all servers in an organization does not do the following:

  • Remove permissions that were added during setup from groups or objects that still exist after uninstalling Exchange

  • Remove the Microsoft Exchange System Objects container from the Active Directory directory service

  • Roll back the Active Directory schema

  • Remove any extended rights that were added during setup, such as SendAs and ReceiveAs rights

  • Remove the Exchange configuration container from Active Directory

  • Remove user data, such as database files, log files, public folder data, and public folder replicas

For instructions about how to remove only server roles from a server, see How to Remove Exchange 2007 Server Roles.

Before You Begin

To perform the following procedures, the account you use must be delegated the following:

  • Exchange Organization Administrator role

For more information about permissions, delegating roles, and the rights that are required to administer Exchange Server 2007, see Permission Considerations.

Also, for any servers that have the Mailbox server role installed from which you are removing Exchange, make sure you have either deleted, disabled, or moved all mailboxes, public folders, and public folder replicas to another Mailbox server.

Procedure

To remove an Exchange 2007 organization

  1. For each Exchange 2007 server in your organization, remove Exchange 2007. For detailed instructions, see How to Completely Remove Exchange 2007 from a Server.

  2. (Optional) Remove the Exchange 2007 administrative group by using ADSIEdit. The Exchange 2007 administrative group is called Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT).