"Hide from exchange address lists" not working in Exchange 2007

Question

Hiding a user by checking the "hide from exchange address lists" from exchange management console is not working. The user still shows up in GAL.

When I ran Get-Mailbox -Identity _user_ | FL I got HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled : True

So the check-box is working but the user still shows up. It's been over 3 weeks since hiding the user so it's not a time issue.

This is what I have tried:

• Using Outlook in online mode
• Using OWA
• Regenerating GAL
• Un-checking then re-checking the "hide" check-box

Solution

This sounds like it might be a permissions issue on the Active Directory attributes of this user. I suspect the user is currently in (or was once in) one of the Active Directory protected groups (listed here).

You have 2 options depending on what situation you are trying to hide the user.

• If this is a user who has left, remove the user from the protected groups and enable inheritable permissions on the user object.
• If this is an account which still requires admin permissions, you can enable inheritable permissions and immediately rebuild the offline address book. The inheritable permissions flag is reset once an hour, so provided you rebuild your OAB before it is reset, you should be fine.

To enable inheritable permissions on the user object, follow this procedure.

• In Active Directory Users and Computers on the View menu, click Advanced Features
• Go to the properties of the affected user object, go to the Security tab and hit the Advanced button
• Check the box labelled Allow inheritable permissions from parent to propagate to this object and all child objects

Comments

[Abdullah]

Actually, no, he is not. I checked some other "hidden users" and they're showing up in GAL as well.

[Massimo]

Why in the world are you using VBScript with Exchange 2010?!? What has PowerShell done to you?