This e-mail address already exists in this organisation

[plesbit]

Hi. I am not overly familiar with Exchange but unfortunately have an Exchange server to look after! I've normally been up to whatever it has decided to throw at me but this one is proving more frustrating - especially as it is a seemingly trivial issue. Any help appreciated greatly!

The issue is basically this - I have an email group set up for the staff currently covering purchasing for our organisation. The address is currently purchasing@ourdomain.com or purchasing@ourdomain.co.uk but we'd like to add buying@ourdomain.com as well. Trouble is, when trying add it in Active Directory I get the following:

"This e-mail address already exists in this organisation.

ID no: c10312e7
Microsoft Active Directory - Exchange Extension"

Multiple searches of AD generated no results. Then again I couldn't get it to locate even email addresses that I knew existed and where they existed.

So I tried looking in the Exchange System Manager. At the same time I also tried emailing both buying@ourdomain.com and buying@ourdomain.co.uk with delivery receipt requests. Using the delivery receipts I was able to confirm that the email addresses had been allocated to a public folder.

On speaking to the staff concerned they decided they did not wish to use the public folder, would prefer it was removed and the address reallocated to the distribution group.

So I removed the public folder and all its details in the Exchange System Manager. I went through the system manager and refreshed the views to confirm it had gone. I also visited the public folder list and confirmed it was no longer showing. I waited 30 mins or so and then tried to add the buying address to the email group but the same error persisted.

In the Exchange System Manager I then manually ran the mailbox cleanup utility and the recipient update service. After a short wait I tried again to add the buying email address but the same error persisted. The following day I sent emails with delivery receipt requests to both email addresses. This time, however, no receipt was received and eventually, several days later, I received a message informing me that:

"The following recipients could not be reached: Could not deliver the message in the time limit specified."

So, despite there being no trace of them that my limited Exchange skills can find, the AD continues to insist the addresses are allocated.

What have I missed?

 

[nymack66]

The email address in question was manually add as a secondary address under a valid user or distribution group within the domain. Example a valid user Jane Doe can have a single mail box with a default address of jdoe@wahtever.com she can also add jdoe2@whatever.com, iamnowmarried@whatever.com all incoming mails will be routed to Jane Doe.
The fact you receive bounce leads me to think you should check the list of disabled accounts !

 

[plesbit]

Hi. The address was definitely assigned to the Public Folder and not to any disabled accounts (which are all stored in a Disabled Accounts OU and so easy to check). Not only could I email the address and get a delivery confirmation that the message was received (by the public folder account) but I could go to the public folder and there was the message I had sent. Equally I could go into the Exchange System Manager and check the list of SMTP addresses allocated to the public folder there were two showing; the default and one additional (as in your example).

The public folder was deleted, the mailbox clean up run and the recipient update service run too. Now the folder is gone and the addresses no longer work but still the addresses have not been released for re-use elsewhere.

Anyway, in the absence of an obviously better idea I have set the recipient update service for a complete rebuild. We'll see if that clears the problem.

 

[nymack66]

You need to re-home your public folders or run Exchange Best Practice Analyser Tool. Recipient update is not a bad idea depends on how large the Exchange domian is.

 

[58sniper]

I'd say you're likely going to have to dig through adsiedit and see where it's still listed.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[plesbit]

Odd - I didn't receive notification of there being another message on this thread. As it happens I was coming back to update it anyway so that future users of this forum might gain some help from what I have found out.

I have now resolved the issue.

The public folder had been deleted in the Exchange System Manager and was not showing up there any more. However Googling the exact error details brought me to a page on the Microsoft support site which had not come up in any previous searches. Unfortunately I have not kept a note of what it was so I cannot post it here. The page suggested a different way of locating where the address was allocated than I had tried previously.

What I did was to go into the Exchange System Manager, right click on "all address books" and select "new - address list". I then clicked on filter, selected "advanced / public folder / alias" and put in the first few letters I was looking for. Immediately it found the original public folder and I was able to view some of its properties from that window. However it said to do more I would need to go to the public folders list. Well I did and, surprise surprise, it still wasn't showing.

So I then went into the AD Users and Computers and found the Microsoft Exchange System Objects container. In there I was able to locate the public folder concerned and deleted it. When the option came up to delete the mailbox it was greyed out but I went ahead and deleted the folder from the AD anyway. I then refreshed the view and the mailbox with the corresponding ID was now showing separately in the list and marked as disabled. I was then able to delete that as well and this time the option to remove the mailbox was available for selection - which I did.

I then went back into the Exchange System Manager and ran the mailbox cleanup and the recipient update services. On returning to the AD lo and behold the addresses I needed were now available for allocation elsewhere. Job done.

I hope the above proves useful to someone at some point in the future and thanks to those here who have taken the time to try to help out.

 

[58sniper]

Thanks for posting the solution. Hopefully, it will help others in the future.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/