MS Exchange & Account Question

[Azhar]

My boss got married last week. She wants to change her account name to reflect the fact. I suggested that instead of changing the name of the account, we should make a new account and simply set the old account to forward email to the new one (using the forwarding feature in Active Directory).

This way she won't have to tell thousands and thousands of people that she has a new email address with her new last name. She would continue getting it with her old email address even when logging into her new account.

Now my question is simply this: establishing a forwarded email will only forward new mails. But old mails remain in the old account. I want to move all her old mails to her new account.

How do I go about this? Do I simply archive the mail in the old account, and import it in the new? I've never had to do anything like this before.

Our server is Exchange Server 2005 (6.5.x) running on Small Business Server 2003

[4saken]

There is a tool called Exmerge that comes with Exchange support tools.

You can exmerge out an exchange mailboxl to a PST, then "inject" it into a new exchange mailbox. W/o having to do any sort of archive/import. It will just appear as normal email with the same folders the old mailbox had.


BUT Honestly though, you are thinking about this backwards.

You SHOULD rename her account and username. Then either set a forwarding rule on your SMTP server if you have one to just forward the emails to the old address to the new renamed one. Or just create an Exchange Contact for the old email address that forwards tot he newly renamed account. Then you wouldnt even have to bother with arching/exmerging her old email.

There is no reason you should have to delete the old account. It would just make zero sense.

[ianshot]

What we do here is add the new e-mail address and set it as primary to the account, then rename the account to get their new married name. Since the Barracuda does a look up of the e-mail address it just receives new e-mail without a problem (unless I fat finger the spelling). Then if anyone has the old address it still works also.

This way you also don't have to set up any new permissions or anything like that too. Though permissions should be done to a group not individual.

Same thing as 4saken said pretty much.

[Azhar]

I think I know what you guys are talking about.

Lets say for the sake of this conversation the old name is Jane Doe and the married name is Jane Smith.

I would first go into Jane Doe's properties in AD and go to Email Addresses tab, then click New, then SMTP, then type in her new email address jsmith@company.com

Then change her alias to jsmith and her account name to Jane Smith?

she would still be able to get jdoe@company.com after I do this?

[4saken]

I think I know what you guys are talking about.

Lets say for the sake of this conversation the old name is Jane Doe and the married name is Jane Smith.

I would first go into Jane Doe's properties in AD and go to Email Addresses tab, then click New, then SMTP, then type in her new email address jsmith@company.com

Then change her alias to jsmith and her account name to Jane Smith?

she would still be able to get jdoe@company.com after I do this?

Basically that is what we are saying. However I would change her account first, then add the SMTP address. We use a linux server runnign QMAIL for our front-end, so when i want to add redirects on name changes, i just drop in a .qmail file telling the server to forward the email over to the new account.

But I believe in an Exchange only environment like yours renaming the account, then just adding a new SMTP address with the old account should work.

[Azhar]

Basically that is what we are saying. However I would change her account first, then add the SMTP address. We use a linux server runnign QMAIL for our front-end, so when i want to add redirects on name changes, i just drop in a .qmail file telling the server to forward the email over to the new account.

But I believe in an Exchange only environment like yours renaming the account, then just adding a new SMTP address with the old account should work.

Turned out this worked best. When you rename an account in Active Driectory, a wizard pops up and guides you through changing other things it recommends changing along with the name to ensure everything works, then I would add new SMTP and put the old email address back in in addition to the newly created one.

All new and old mails goes to one mailbox this way.

I appreciate your help guys! This saves me a ton of work from having to go through everything (Primavera, Sharepoint, etc) to add her new account and transfer the old ones!