How does the admin "create the new mailbox"? By using ADU&C or some other method?Scripts can do many things that ADU&C will prevent.Carl
From: exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jabber Wock
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 11:43 PM
To: [ExchangeList]
Subject: [ExchangeList] Puzzling Mystery: Ex2k3 allows adding a mailbox with same name as an existing SMTP alias!Hi,Here is a strange situation I ran into on an Exchange 2003 server and I was wondering if anyone can shed light on it.An existing user has email address Joe.Blo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. And he is also configured with an existing SMTP "alias" of sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. So far so good, all is working great, for weeks and months.Now a request comes to make a mailbox for sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The admin does not realize that there is already a user with this same alias, and goes ahead and creates the new mailbox.Amazingly, and here is the perplexing part: Exchange 2003 and AD do not complain, but go ahead and allow this mailbox to be created! So now there is a mailbox named salesd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx and also secretly and unintentionally, an existing user with an alias sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ! And of course, any emails for sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx go to both.How and why does Exchange allow this?Interestingly, Exchange does not allow the opposite sitation. If I were to try and add sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx as an email SMTP alias to some other existing user Mary.Jane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Exchange / AD refuses to do it as it correctly should.You may want to try this just as an experiment.So why is it allowed the other way? Is this an Exchange bug or a "feature" ?Best regardsJW