Exchange Messages Undeliverable after Name Change

Question

I have two users that changed their last names months ago. Recently, I was troubleshooting why they weren't showing up in Global Address List. The reason was their ADSI property for "Mail" still had their old alias. I poked around in a couple other fields, but am pretty sure I set everything back correctly (minus that Mail field, and I think a field with the name "legacy" in it).

By the way, since I've started working here the procedure for name changes are to create a whole new AD and Exchange user, and exporting/importing data and .PST files, so we don't run into stuff like this. I'm treating that as a last resort for these users.

Since then, whenever other users try to email these people from Outlook, they get an undeliverable message like so:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:

Barbara NewLastName
The recipient's e-mail address was not found in the recipient's e-mail system. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please check the e-mail address and try resending this message, or provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.

  _____  

Sent by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 







Diagnostic information for administrators:

Generating server: mail.MyDomain.com

IMCEAEX-_O=MyDomain_OU=First+20Administrative+20Group_cn=Recipients_cn=[e-mail]
#550 5.1.1 RESOLVER.ADR.ExRecipNotFound; not found ##

Original message headers:

Received: from mail.MyDomain.com ([192.168.200.3]) by mail
 ([192.168.200.3]) with mapi; Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:56:14 -0500
Content-Type: application/ms-tnef; name="winmail.dat"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary
From: Sarah Sender <[email protected]>
To: Barbara NewLastName
    <IMCEAEX-_O=MYDOMAIN_OU=First+20Administrative+20Group_cn=Recipients_cn=[e-mail]>
CC: Daniel SomeoneElse <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:56:13 -0500
Subject: FW: The Subject
Thread-Topic: The Subject
Thread-Index: Ac4cTWKfaQjD6MaWTUOOIrrWlcn91AAAdmEwAIhri+A=
Message-ID: <3A90EE12812EA74ABCAF358A8B0C4264040724A0EA@proteus>
References: <[email protected]>
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach: yes
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: <3A90EE12812EA74ABCAF358A8B0C4264040724A0EA@proteus>
MIME-Version: 1.0

Notice the old name still shows up at one point in that error message.

Here's the real kicker: If the sender sends through OWA it goes through fine. If I take the sender's Outlook off, then back on Cached Exchange Mode, AND I delete old auto-fill entries for the trouble recipients, then it fixes the problem for them.

The problem is that it's impractical to go around the company and do that to 230+ people's Outlooks. I'm wondering what's still happening on the server to make this issue occur.

I've used the cmdlet that updates the Offline Address Book, and that obviously hasn't worked. Issue has been going on for 4 or 5 days now.

Solution

When you change an Exchange user's name, their X.500 address changes. The X.500 address is what Outlook caches for the type-ahead lookup that everyone is using.

Using the NDR you have above, add this as an additional X.500 address to her mailbox:

/O=MyDomain/OU=First Administrative Group/cn=Recipients/[email protected]

Comments

[armani]

Thanks, that seems to have resolved the issue! I did a little more research on that X.500 addressing, and found this article was very helpful as well: simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/…