[Exchange] OAB Issue

Hi,
We had recently a strange issue on Outlook clients, regarding the OAB (Offline Address Book).
In fact, we had removed old Exchange 2003 server, which was responsible for the Recipient Update Service (on both Domain/Forest) and the Offline Address Lists (see captures).

On the client side (Outlook 2003 or 2007 clients), some users/groups do not show on the address list (Global Address List) !


After some research, I found this article which explains well the "Mystery of The Missing Recipients" !


Now, to resolve the issue, I had to search over Active Directory for groups/users that had default SMTP address (on the Email Addresses tab) different from the email address (on the General tab).


To do so, here is a simple VBS that exports all the groups on the domain, with the email address and default SMTP address (made some modifications on this original script):

'Export all groups in AD with custom attributes, here: 'sAMAccountName;Group type;Mail address;Main SMTP address ' This script is designed to be run at a command prompt, using the ' Cscript host. The output can be redirected to a text file. ' For example: ' cscript //nologo DocumentGroups.vbs > groups.txt ' Option Explicit Dim adoConnection, adoCommand, objRootDSE, strDNSDomain, strQuery Dim adoRecordset, strDN, objGroup, Address, MainSMTP ' Use ADO to search Active Directory. Set adoConnection = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Set adoCommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command") adoConnection.Provider = "ADsDSOObject" adoConnection.Open "Active Directory Provider" Set adoCommand.ActiveConnection = adoConnection ' Determine the DNS domain from the RootDSE object. Set objRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE") strDNSDomain = objRootDSE.Get("defaultNamingContext") ' Search for all groups, return the Distinguished Name of each. strQuery = "     & ">;(objectClass=group);distinguishedName;subtree" adoCommand.CommandText = strQuery adoCommand.Properties("Page Size") = 100 adoCommand.Properties("Timeout") = 30 adoCommand.Properties("Cache Results") = False Set adoRecordset = adoCommand.Execute If (adoRecordset.EOF = True) Then     Wscript.Echo "No groups found"     adoRecordset.Close     adoConnection.Close     Set objRootDSE = Nothing     Set adoConnection = Nothing     Set adoCommand = Nothing     Set adoRecordset = Nothing     Wscript.Quit End If 'Headers for the output WScript.Echo "sAMAccountName;Group type;Mail address;Main SMTP address" ' Enumerate all groups, bind to each, and document group members. Do Until adoRecordset.EOF     strDN = adoRecordset.Fields("distinguishedName").Value     ' Escape any forward slash characters with backslash.     strDN = Replace(strDN, "/", "\/")     Set objGroup = GetObject("LDAP://" & strDN) '& adspath,proxyAddresses)             'Get the proxyaddresses     on error resume next       For Each Address In objGroup.proxyAddresses             If left(Address,5)= "SMTP:" Then                   MainSMTP = Address                                End if       Next         WScript.Echo objGroup.sAMAccountName _         & ";" & GetType(objGroup.groupType) _         & " ; " & objGroup.mail & " ; " & MainSMTP         adoRecordset.MoveNext     Loop adoRecordset.Close ' Clean up. adoConnection.Close Set objRootDSE = Nothing Set objGroup = Nothing Set adoConnection = Nothing Set adoCommand = Nothing Set adoRecordset = Nothing Function GetType(ByVal intType)     ' Function to determine group type from the GroupType attribute.     If ((intType And &h01) <> 0) Then         GetType = "Built-in"     ElseIf ((intType And &h02) <> 0) Then         GetType = "Global"     ElseIf ((intType And &h04) <> 0) Then         GetType = "Local"     ElseIf ((intType And &h08) <> 0) Then         GetType = "Universal"     End If     If ((intType And &h80000000) <> 0) Then         GetType = GetType & "/Security"     Else         GetType = GetType & "/Distribution"     End If End Function

After the data was exported into a csv file, I used Excel to compare the columns "Mail address" and "Main SMTP address" (the EXACT function), and thus, found only 4 elements and did updated the fields manually.


PS. You can do it via VBS (searching through AD, comparing and updating the data).


Hope it helps.


Imed.