The REMOVEORG option in Exchange Server 2003

This article discusses the removeorg option that is available with the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Setup program. With this feature, you can remove an Exchange organization from the Active Directory directory service. The removeorg option removes all Exchange organization information (such as administrative groups, routing groups, and server objects) from the configuration naming context in Active Directory.

Important Do not use the removeorg option unless you intend to remove Exchange completely from your organization. You must also remove Exchange from your servers before you run the removeorg option. If you try to remove Exchange from the servers after you run the option, the removal process fails. You then must remove Exchange manually. The removeorg option removes all Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 servers from your organization. Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 servers in your organization will not function after you run this option. If this option is used inadvertently, you may have to reinstall all the Exchange 2000 servers and Exchange 2003 servers in your organization.

Make sure you have moved any Exchange mailboxes that you want to move from the Exchange servers before you perform this procedure.

The removeorg option does not perform the following functions:

• Clean up files or registry keys on your Exchange servers.
• Clean up Exchange information that has been replicated to a Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 directory.
• Remove attributes from any Exchange mailboxes in Active Directory (including Exchange Server 5.5 mailboxes that are replicated to Active Directory, Exchange 2000 mailboxes, and Exchange 2003 mailboxes).
  
  The Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 mailboxes are effectively orphaned if you do not move or clean up these mailboxes before you run the removeorg option.
• Remove recipient Connection Agreements or public folder Connection Agreements.

Prerequisites

• Important Make sure that there are no Exchange 2000 mailboxes, Exchange 2003 mailboxes, or any other functionality being used on Exchange before you run the removeorg option.
• To run the Setup program with the removeorg option, you must have full Administrator rights in the organization in addition to Administrator rights on the local computer.
• You do not have to run the command from an Exchange 2003 server.

To use the Exchange 2003 removeorg option, run the following command, where Install_Path is the path of the Exchange 2003 installation CD or installation folder:

For additional information about how to remove Exchange 2003, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: