The need to remove a (legacy) Exchange server using ADSIEdit could have several reasons. The method using ADSIEdit to remove an Exchange server should only be used carefully.

The most common reasons are listed below:

• The deinstallation didn’t finish properly and left attributes or entries in Active Directory
• The Exchange server is permanent offline Exchange and should be removed
• An Exchange installation didn’t finish properly and the attributes and entries shoould be removed

To remove the server open ADSI-Edit and go to configuration

Navigate to this path:

CN=Configuration,DC=DOMAIN,DC=LOCAL
CN=Services
CN=Microsoft Exchange
CN=EXCHANGE_ORG
CN=Administrative Groups

for Exchange 2003
CN=First Administrative Group

for Exchange 2007
CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)

for Exchange 2010
CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)

CN=Servers

Within the container CN=Servers you can see you installed legacy Exchange servers. By right-click and hit delete you can remove the objects. You can also remove single objects of a server like public folder databases.

Refer to this article to see how to remove public folders in the different versions of Exchange.

Cheers,

Chris