Sync AD and Exchange Users

Question

I'm trying to setup Exchange so that it will create mailboxes for each AD user, when I go into Exchange and tell it to create a mailbox it removes the user account from AD and I can no longer manage it except from Exchange (almost like a convert). Should I just create two different accounts? Or what would be the correct path for me to go down. Thanks,

Solution

In ADUC, search for the username - is it possible another admin has scripted things such that creating a mailbox for a user causes it to be moved to a different OU?

What version of Exchange and at what functional level is your AD? What is the process or command you're using to create mailboxes?

To answer your question of how it should work, you have two options:

• Create a mailbox, follow the prompts that specify the creation of a new user (AD) account to associate with the mailbox. (If you're using Exchange 2007, you can also do this via command prompt, er - Exchange Management Shell) Apologies if this method doesn't work in Ex2003, it's already been too long, apparently.

• Create a user (normally, through ADUC), then in Exchange management (System Manager for 2003; Management Console in 2007) create a mailbox and attach it to the pre-created username.

With the version info, we can hopefully help you narrow it down.

Comments

[John Gardeniers]

Can you please describe exactly how you are doing this? How are you creating the accounts and how are you creating the mailboxes. Feel free to also give us some clues as to which version of AD and Exchange.

[user1364702]

That sounds kind of odd...isn't your Exchange server tied into AD? I'm no expert on AD by a long shot, but in our setup creating a new AD account asks us if we want to create an Exchange mailbox and it's maintained from our Users and Computers snapin.

[wolfvilleian]

Now I've made a fool of myself, I'm using Exchange 2010 and Server 2008 R2, and it was working the whole time, for some reason the ADUC was somehow staying running in the background when closed and when I re-launched it, the OU's objects were never re-loaded so I never saw them appear doh. Got it fixed though now.

[Kara Marfia]

Hey, if you never screwed up you'd be SO BORED! That's what I keep telling myself.