Overview

This article describes the procedure to remove users from the MailEssentials user list in order to manage the number of users counting towards license utilization.

Prerequisites

The procedure to remove users is dependent on the User Mode selected during product installation. User Mode determines how MailEssentials retrieves the list of users and cannot be changed post-installation.

You can confirm which MailEssentials User Mode was selected during installation by following these steps:

1. Open the GFI MailEssentials configuration
2. Select General Settings > Settings
3. If the User Manager tab is available, then GFI MailEssentials is installed in SMTP mode otherwise, it is installed in Active Directory or Remote Active Directory mode.

You can verify the number of users currently counting towards the license utilization by checking GFI MailEssentials > General Settings > Licensing and then go to the License key information table at the bottom of the page.

Solution

MailEssentials in Active Directory or Remote Active Directory mode

When GFI MailEssentials is installed in Active Directory or Remote Active Directory mode, the user count is managed by either disabling or deleting users from Active Directory Users and Computers on the domain controller.
You can verify the change by checking the License key information data as described above or alternatively enabling tracing and checking the contents of the usercntad.log log file located in..GFI\MailEssentials\Debuglogs (in GFI MailEssentials 2014 R2: ..GFI\MailEssentials\Attendant\Debuglogs)

MailEssentials installed on the Exchange Server

When GFI MailEssentials is installed on a Microsoft Exchange server, users are retrieved from the Exchange Information Store. During installation, the administrator can select to retrieve users from Active Directory, and all Active Directory users that have their mailbox on the Microsoft Exchange Information Store on the same machine will be counted and used for licensing purposes.

In this deployment scenario, the user list can be managed by removing unused or inactive Microsoft Exchange mailboxes. 
You can verify the change to the MailEssentials user list by checking the License key information or alternatively enabling tracing and checking the contents of the usercntvsapi.txt log file located in ..GFI\MailEssentials\Debuglogs (in GFI MailEssentials 2014 R2: ..GFI\MailEssentials\Attendant\Debuglogs)

MailEssentials installed in SMTP mode

When GFI MailEssentials is installed in SMTP mode, users can be deleted as follows:

1. Open the GFI MailEssentials Configuration
2. Select General Settings > Settings
3. Click on the User Manager tab
4. Select and Remove users as required

You can verify the change by checking the License key information data or alternatively enabling tracing and checking the contents of the usertimecnt.txt log file located in ..GFI\MailEssentials\Debuglogs (in GFI MailEssentials 2014 R2: ..GFI\MailEssentials\Attendant\Debuglogs)

Confirmation

You can confirm the desired changes to the user count by enabling Tracing and reading the respective log files as described above. Enable Tracing by opening GFI MailEssentials Switchboard and selecting the Tracing enabled check-box under the Tracing tab as shown below:

Alternatively, you may log in to the MailEssentials web console and check the License key information as described in the prerequisite steps above.

To get more information about how GFI MailEssentials retrieves and counts users, please review this relevant article: How does GFI MailEssentials retrieve and count users?