PDM best practice for inactive users

I'm looking for opinions on best practice for dealing with "old" PDM users. As years go by and employees come and go, the list of PDM users continues to grow. This becomes unruly when selecting users from a list and you have to look through dozens (or hundreds) of former employees. I brought this up with our VAR in the past and was told that deleting them was not recommended due to the fact that the history of items would be missing the identifying information. It was suggested their permissions be stripped and they should be added to a group with no rights.

Has anyone dealt with this situation successfully (or unsuccessfully)? I'd love to hear your input.

SolidworksAdministration