Lync users already 'In the cloud' and Active Directory sync

Hey,

At our company, we're currently using Lync Online with 25 users and we want to enable Active Directory synchronization between our on-premises AD to Office 365. We want to do this in order to enable Sharepoint at some later date.

My problem is this: If I start DirSync now with Office 365, what will happen with the 25 'In the cloud' Lync users? Will the accounts from AD and Office 365 Lync be merged? Or will DirSync show error messages because the data in our AD is already present in Office 365? According to some other post, I have to delete the Lync users, synchronize our AD with Office 365 and then reassign licenses to users. I hope there is a way to do this without deleting the 'In the cloud' users.

Thanks for all your help.