Category Address List Management

Jul 15 2014

Updating GAL entries forcefully on Exchange Server 2010 using EMS

Recently I had come up with an issue as mentioned below :

A new email alias was added for a domain mailbox in an Exchange 2010 environment. On one of the users Outlook 2010, whenever the user sends an email to this new address [be it test@example.com], the email is being rejected reporting that such an email address does not exist. I initially tried the following troubleshooting methods :

  1. Tried downloading OAB manually on the workstation from Outlook -> Account Settings
  2. Compared the GUID of the OAB on the Exchange Server location ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\ExchangeOAB’ and the GUID of the OAB present in the outlook [this can be found out by pressing CTRL key + Right click on Outlook icon present in notification area to get Test E-mail AutoConfiguration. Test the setting and note the OAB GUID] and confirmed both are the same
  3. Tried updating OAB in the Exchange Server but resulted in the below error

OAB update

The above issue was resolved by removing the distribution of OAB using ‘Public Folder Distribution‘. It is safe to perform this step in an environment with no Outlook 2003 or earlier clients, as they are the one who access OAB using public folders. Once this step is performed, OAB will use Web Based Distribution.

Even after performing the above steps the issues still persisted. After searching a couple of links online, found out a thread which suggested on performing the following :

  • Update Global Address List on the Exchange Server using the command ‘Get-GlobalAddressList | Update-GlobalAddressList‘
  • Update Address List using the command ‘Get-AddressList | Update-AddressList‘
  • Update OAB using the command ‘Get-OfflineAddressBook | Update-OfflineAddressBook‘
  • Execute the shell command ‘Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -ApplyMandatoryProperties‘
  • Restart the following MS Exchange services ‘Microsoft Exchange System Attendant Service‘ & ‘Microsoft Exchange File Distribution Service‘
  • Download the address book manually to your email client without enabling the option ‘download changes since last send/receive‘

Check and confirm whether the newly added email alias is updated in GAL.

 

Reference : Technet forums.