Sunday, March 05, 2006

Solving "e-mail address already exists in this organization" using LDAP query in ADUC

This dicussion was just in the newsgroups and I felt the solution was worthy of a blog post. A administrator is having a problem creating an SMTP proxy address for a mailbox. The message they get when they try to add snuffy@domain.com as an SMTP address is "This e-mail address already exists in this organization. ID no: c10312e7 Microsoft Active Directory - Exchange Extension".

The SMTP address the admin is trying to assign is already assigned to another mail-enabled object (mailbox, mail-enabled user, contact, or mail-enabled group.) I suggested doing an LDIFDE dump to LDF file of the entire directory and seaching through that file. Rich Matheisen suggested a better and far faster way.

Using the Windows 2003 Active Directory Users and Computers utility, right click on the domain, choose Find. In the Find: dropdown list, choose "Custom Search" and in the In: dropdown list, choose "Entire Directory". Click the Advanced property page and enter the following LDAP query (in my example, at least):

proxyaddresses=smtp:snuffy@domain.com

Click Find and you should find the object that already has that SMTP address. Thanks Rich!

14 Comments:

At 2:37 PM, Blogger Jim McBee said...

Hi Devin! Yep, pretty obvious technique to get the data. Sometimes I look for a deeper, darker solution. :-)

 
At 3:49 AM, Blogger ElectricF said...

Great solution !

As simple as every one who have a problem needs it !!!

 
At 8:48 AM, Blogger Mike Mc said...

Thank you Jeebus this is what I was looking for all day! Cheers!

Mike

 
At 1:56 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Thanks,
Very useful...

 
At 1:43 PM, Blogger PSW said...

all I can say is "What a guy....What a guy....What a guy!!

 
At 4:35 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Thank you very much for this great solution. My problem was e-mail address was assigned to an exchange public folder. I wasn't able to create a distribution list with this email address.

Olivier.

 
At 6:10 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Better than Microsoft's steps... thanks!

 
At 11:30 AM, Blogger Michael Sheena said...

"proxyaddresses=smtp:snuffy@domain.com

brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness.

 
At 6:47 AM, Blogger bongo said...

thanks, very useful.

 
At 7:30 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Awesome. Thanks!

Stupid public folders... *grumble*

 
At 3:31 PM, Blogger BeanQueen said...

Thank you, thank you! So simple - like checking the power supply when a piece of equipment is not working. I, too, grumble at public folders. =)

 
At 10:52 AM, Blogger Thomazini said...

Very usefull, it helped me a lot!

The old and famous "public folder" was the cause again.

 
At 8:35 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

I have this same issue only when I do the custom search it finds nothing. Any ideas?

 
At 6:57 AM, Blogger Andrew Platts said...

Very helpful. Thanks!

 

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