Modifying AD Attributes (ex Company) are not being picked up automatically by Exchange 2007

Consider the following Scenario:

Exchange 2007 + Outlook in Cached Mode

(1) Create a new Address List ( named Microsoft ) - The filter for this address list is “Company should be Microsoft”

(2) Create a new user in AD - TestOne and also a Mailbox for this User

(3) Open Active Directory Users and Computers on the Domain Controller - Edit the properties of User TestOne , add Company for this user -> Microsoft

(4) When opening the Address List in Outlook (named Microsoft) we cannot find the User TestOne

              When opening Adress List in Outlook Web Access – we also can not find User TestOne

(5) Open Exchange Management Cconsole - Right click the Address List ( named Microsoft ), Edit, click Preview, we can see the User TestOne in this Address List, click cancel.

(6) Checking Outlook again, we can still not see the User TestOne in the Address List.

(7) Opening the User Properties in Exchange Management Console, insert a blank space after “Microsoft” under the Company Field, delete it, click apply.

(8) Checking Outlook again, we can see the User TestOne in the Address List.

(9) Checked Outlook Web Access again, we can see the User TestOne in the Address List.

Further Testing:

(10) Modify Company Name to Microsoft US in Active Directory Users And Computers for User TestOne.

(11) We can still see the User TestOne in Outlook in the Microsoft Address List, we can still see him also in Outlook Web Access , BUT in Outlook Web Access when looking at the User we can see the Company as Microsoft US.

(12) Run Update-Addresslist -identity Microsoft.

(13) We cannot see the user in Outlook in the Microsoft Address List (we expect this), we cannot see the User in Outlook Web Access (we expect this).

Conclusion and Solution:

When modifying Properties in Active Directory Users and Computers, we do not Update the Address Lists in Exchange. The correct way to do these modifications is to use the Exchange Management Console. When doing this via the Exchange Management Console, we do an automatic Update-AdressList for the List that has just been modified.

If you really have to do modifications in bulk, in Active Directory Users and Computers, you should also Update the Address Lists in Exchange Powershell.

 

a.) If you have many Address Lists, you can use:

Get-AddressList | Update-Adresslist

b.) If you only modify one User, you can use:

Update-Recipient UserName ( in our Example -> Update-Recipient TestOne )

 If you have any questions, please send me an Email to patrisel@microsoft.com

Patrick