When you look at the users in Active Directory that were there, but are no longer, do they have mail addresses? Is the mail attribute populated? If so, you may have several issues going on at once that should be addressed IMHO. 1) you have administrative practices that allow old accounts to remain - that's not always a good thing for security, but might be fine in your environment. 2) Exchange can't manipulate an object that already has a mail address because it assumes that if the mail attribute is populated that you know what you're doing and want that controlled by another mailer. 3) if you have accounts, contacts, etc in your directory that don't belong, or with improper addresses, it's a good idea to get rid of those and/or fix them. You can search the Active Directory and find all items with mail attributes present. If they have a mail address, and you're only one using them, then I can't understand why that account is configured that way. If you created an Exchange mailbox for them (mailbox-enabled the user object) then it should have a mail attribute. If you created a contact and mail-enabled it, then it too should have a mail attribute. Make sure the data is accurate. Your client can only do what it's told. If it is told to look for mail-enabled objects in Active Directory, then that's what it will do. If that data exists, it will return it to you regardless of what is seen in the GAL. That's built separately from the Active Directory contents. Your IMAP clients use straight LDAP to gather GAL information and then displays them as contacts because that's the language it understands. Place to start figuring this out is your Active Directory datastore. Search for all objects that have a mail attribute populated and see what comes back. Look it over carefully for objects that should not be there. -Al -----Original Message----- From: Marcel Stangenberger [mailto:msa@xxxxxx] Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 10:16 AM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [exchangelist] Re: configure exchange 2003 (uk) for usage wit h dutch outlook clients http://www.MSExchange.org/ > Who administers your Active Directory? i do > Where did those email addresses in the Active Directory come from? > now there is the big question.... Some of the users it lists don't have an account in the AD, but all the users it shows did have an account sometime in the past (but there was no exchange server in the network at that time). Greetings, Marcel ------------------------------------------------------ List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp Exchange FAQ: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/larticle.asp?type=FAQ ------------------------------------------------------ Other Internet Software Marketing Sites: World of Windows Networking: http://www.windowsnetworking.com Leading Network Software Directory: http://www.serverfiles.com No.1 ISA Server Resource Site: http://www.isaserver.org Windows Security Resource Site: http://www.windowsecurity.com/ Network Security Library: http://www.secinf.net/ Windows 2000/NT Fax Solutions: http://www.ntfaxfaq.com ------------------------------------------------------ You are currently subscribed to this MSEXchange.org Discussion List as: al.mulnick@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe visit http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Report abuse to listadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx