Exchange 2007 and Recipient Type Details

Now that you have been working with Exchange 2007 for a while, you may notice that in the Exchange Management Console, there are a few new things that you see.  One of these is that when you look at objects, you now see a column labeled Recipient Type Details.  This is, in fact, a new attribute that has been added for Exchange 2007.  There is another attribute called Recipient Display Type.  You will not see them with this name in AD, however.  The mapping is as follows:

Recipient Display Type = msExchRecipientDisplayType
Recipient Type Details = msExchRecipientTypeDetails

These two attributes are new attributes that are added to the Active Directory Schema during Exchange 2007 setup. They are used in determining the type of recipient in the Address Book. They are displayed in the Exchange Management Console under Recipient Configuration, and in Exchange Management Shell if you perform a get- command and instruct the shell to return the full list (i.e. Get-Mailbox | fl )

Like many other Active Directory Attributes, these are represented by Integer Values in Active Directory.  One important item to note here is that you do not want to be arbitrarily changing these values.  The Recipient Display Type is something that should only be set by Exchange.  Changing it via any other method is not supported.

I've included a couple of tables for reference.  The first table covers the different values that can be assigned to the Recipient Display Type attribute.

Object Type

RecipientDisplayType (Binary)

Decimal Value

Value Name

Universal Distribution Group

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001

1

DistributionGroup

Universal Security Group

01000000 00000000 00000000 00001001

1073741833

SecurityDistributionGroup

Dynamic Distribution Group

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000011

3

DynamicDistributionGroup

Linked Mailbox, Shared Mailbox, or User Mailbox

01000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

1073741824

ACLableMailboxUser

Room Mailbox

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000111

7

ConferenceRoomMailbox

Equipment Mailbox

00000000 00000000 00000000 00001000

8

EquipmentMailbox

Mail User, Mail Contact

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000110

6

 

Public Folder

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000010

2

RemoteMailUser

N/A (this represents a special “Organization” object to Outlook, but does not map to a specific exchange object type)

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000100

4

Organization

N/A (this represents a special “Private Distribution List” object to Outlook, but does not map to a specific exchange object type)

00000000 00000000 00000000 00000101

5

PrivateDistributionList

This second table is perhaps of more interest.  In most situations, you will see objects appear as they should.  For example, a new mailbox (for an existing user or a new user) should always show up as a User Mailbox.  If your Exchange 2007 server co-exists with Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2000 servers, then all mailboxes on those 2000 or 2003 servers will show up as Legacy mailboxes.  You may, however, find under certain circumstances that it does not appear correctly.  For instance, after moving a mailbox from an Exchange 2003 server, which appears as Legacy Mailbox, to your Exchange 2007 server, it may now appear as a Linked Mailbox.  If this happens, you need to investiage why.  One possible cause could be if Associated External Account was set on the 2003 mailbox.

Also note that this attribute will not always be stamped with a value.  For example, Groups do not appear to have this attribute set with a value.  This leads me to conclude that Exchange is able to read this information from other attribute values as well (such as perhaps the GroupType attribute).

Although you should not be changing these values in a production environment, it is always fun to play around in a lab and learn more about what they do.  But make sure you do your playing in a lab environment!

Object Type

RecipientTypeDetails (Decimal Value)

Value Name

User Mailbox

1

UserMailbox

Linked Mailbox

2

LinkedMailbox

Shared Mailbox

4

SharedMailbox

Legacy Mailbox

8

LegacyMailbox

Room Mailbox

16

RoomMailbox

Equipment Mailbox

32

EquipmentMailbox

Mail Contact

64

MailContact

Mail-enabled User

128

MailUser

Mail-enabled Universal Distribution Group

256

MailUniversalDistributionGroup

Mail-enabled non-Universal Distribution Group

512

MailNonUniversalGroup

Mail-enabled Universal Security Group

1024

MailUniversalSecurityGroup

Dynamic Distribution Group

2048

DynamicDistributionGroup

Mail-enabled Public Folder

4096

PublicFolder

System Attendant Mailbox

8192

SystemAttendantMailbox

Mailbox Database Mailbox

16384

SystemMailbox

Across-Forest Mail Contact

32768

MailForestContact

User

65536

User

Contact

131072

Contact

Universal Distribution Group

262144

UniversalDistributionGroup

Universal Security Group

524288

UniversalSecurityGroup

Non-Universal Group

1048576

NonUniversalGroup

Disabled User

2097152

DisabledUser

Microsoft Exchange

4194304

MicrosoftExchange

[Update]
Although I couldn't find it previously, some of this information is documented in the Technet Exchange 2007 documentation.  If you happen to be experiencing an issue where a mailbox is showing up with the wrong Recipient Display Type, please reference the following links for details on how to correct that.  Also note that in most cases, there is a reason for a mailbox showing up the way it is.  For example, if you perform a cross-org mailbox move without first migrating the user account, it will show up as a Linked mailbox, and that is normal.  What you don't want to do is simply modify this value without addressing the other reasons for the current value being stamped.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201749.aspx - How to Convert a mailbox
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201694.aspx - How to Convert a mailbox to a Linked mailbox

[thanks to the comment of a visitor, it looks like I was off in my decimal conversions. I've edited the top table accordingly]