Office365 Modifying User Details / Discrepancies

[MYK-IT]

Hi,

 

We have been using Office 365 for a few years (manually creating email accounts through CSV import method) and I thought it would be a good time to do some house-keeping due to the way some of the original accounts were created and I couldn't easily search/filter/identify those from specific year/groups.

 

My intention was to modify the "Department" field with, for example, their start year and then, within Office 365, I could create a view that would filter based on "Department" field, e.g. 2008, 2009 etc.

 

Instead of going through each account, one by one, after some research and using Azure PowerShell I managed to export all the current accounts to a CSV, make the necessary changes using Excel, saving and re-importing the modified CSV file. All this worked great, so now within Exchange Admin Centre I can see that all the email accounts have had their "Department" fields updated/amended (as intended).

 

My next step was then to create various filtered views in Office 365; and then select the required view to start some housekeeping on...

 

This is where the problem lies...I soon realised that the "Department" field value differs for the same user account if you view it in Office 365 and then in Exchange Admin Centre.

 

No problem (so I thought) I will use the search feature within Exchange Admin Centre, and then delete the accounts...you can't delete accounts in Exchange Admin Centre, only in Office 365.

 

I know that many will say, just use PowerShell combined with the CSV file I created that lists the accounts (UPN) I would like to delete; but I am just curious why, in this situation that the "Department" field (values) differ between Exchange Admin Centre and Office 365?

 

Thanks,