Removing the “Set expansion server” setting for a Exchange Server 2010 distribution group that is still referencing an Exchange 2003 Server

Problem

You’ve just completed migration an Exchange Server 2003 organization to Exchange 2010 but noticed that emails to some distribution groups are not being delivered.  After reviewing the distribution groups, you notice that the Set expansion server setting for the distribution group is still referencing the Exchange 2003 Server:

The easy fix is to simply uncheck the Set expansion server, click OK and you’re on your way. 

The challenge by doing it this way is if there are either a lot of distribution groups set this way or there are so many distribution groups that it would take too much time to determine which ones have this set.

Solution

The way to automate the process as many would know is to use the PowerShell cmdlets.  To determine which distribution groups have this set, we can use the Get-DistributionGroup cmdlet as described in the following TechNet article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124755(v=exchg.150).aspx

The attribute we’re interested in is the ExpansionServer attribute as shown here:

Get-DistributionGroup -identity “S2 Students” | FL

We can alternatively use the following cmdlet to list all of the groups by their DisplayName and ExpansionServer attribute only but the problem by doing it this way is that it would list groups with no ExpansionServer set as well:

Get-DistributionGroup | FL DisplayName,ExpansionServer

To refine the search, we can use the -filter switch as such:

Get-DistributionGroup -Filter {ExpansionServer -like '/o=EDUCATION*'} | FL DisplayName,ExpansionServer

Other methods that would achive the same results is to use -eq switch for a exact search or the -ne (not equal) switch as such:

Get-DistributionGroup -Filter {ExpansionServer -ne $null} | FL DisplayName,ExpansionServer

With the cmdlets used to retrieve the distribution groups with an expansion server set, we can now use the Set-DistributionGroup cmdlet as described here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124955(v=exchg.150).aspx

… to remove the ExpansionServer attribute.  To do this for a single distribution group, use the following cmdlet:

Set-DistributionGroup -Identity "BUT" -ExpansionServer $null

To do the same for all of the distribution groups, use the following cmdlet:

Get-DistributionGroup -Filter {ExpansionServer -like '/o=EDUCATION*'} | Set-DistributionGroup -ExpansionServer $null

This cmdlet will ask you to confirm for each which is useful if you want to be sure you don’t inadvertently set other distribution groups to null but if you’re sure that all of the returned distribution groups should have their ExpansionServer attribute removed, you can simply use the letter A response to set all of the groups in one shot.

Once the above cmdlet successfully executes, the distribution group’s Advanced tab should display the Set expansion server setting as such:

Attempting to decommission an Exchange 2003 server throws the error: “The component “Microsoft Exchange Messaging and Collaboration Services” cannot be assigned the action “Remove” because: - One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.”

As many Exchange 2003 to 2007 and 2010 migrations I’ve done over the years, I think the part of the migration I dread most is the end of the migration when the Exchange 2003 server needs to be decommissioned.  Other than making sure that all the mailboxes are moved, public folders fully replicated and moved over, and all of your legacy routing connectors are recreated for large organizations that still have Exchange 2003 servers, I find that I almost always receive errors when I try to use the Add and Remove Programs wizard to uninstall Exchange.

Just when I thought I’ve seen all of the possible reasons why an uninstall would fail, one of the recent Exchange 2003 migrations threw me the following new error:

The component “Microsoft Exchange Messaging and Collaboration Services” cannot be assigned the action “Remove” because:
- One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server. These users must be moved to a mailbox store on a different server or be mail disabled before uninstalling this server.

This was the last error of the 3 I fixed (the other ones being routing members and routing groups) and while I’ve seen something like this before where various users weren’t visible by browsing the mailbox stores on the Exchange 2003 servers via the System Manager console, so you had to use the following KB:

Error message when you try to remove Exchange Server from a mailbox server that no longer hosts mailboxes: "One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924170

To launch Active Directory Users and Computers, use the Find tool to search for users via the Exchange tab while checking:

• Show only Exchange recipients
• Users with Exchange mailbox

Then use the View tab to select the Choose Columns… option:

Then add the column Exchange Mailbox Store:

… then finally use the Exchange Home Server tab to sort the users and locate the mailboxes that are still associated with the Exchange 2003 server you are trying to decommission:

This has always worked for me but not for the last migration because no matter which domain I searched, I could not locate any mailboxes that are associated with the server I was trying to decommission:

After triple checking all the domains, I proceeded back to Google to see if I could find something that would help and that was when I came across this post:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/exchange/en-US/2758744e-ab92-45af-bc01-5a1280887230/one-or-more-users-currently-use-a-mailbox-store-on-this-server?forum=exchange2010

So apparently there was another way to try searching for these mailboxes and that is to select the Custom Search option in the Find drop down menu:

Select the Advanced tab:

In the Enter LDAP query textbox, type in:

objectClass=User

Searching with this method finally revealed the mailboxes I was looking for:

Proceeding to select the accounts with the mailboxes and then using Exchange Tasks… enabled me to remove these mailboxes and proceed with the uninstall:

Once the mailboxes in question have been removed, proceed with restarting the uninstaller and the error should go away: