I am attempting to hide users no longer in our company from our GAL. I have been trying to do this through Active Directory. I verified the 'hide from Exchange address list' in AD is checked for these users, but they still shows up. On my own PC I deleted the *.oab files and downloaded the offline address book again, but it still shows. I also checked OWA and they show in there as well. Is there anywhere else that would hold these? I have searched but could not find much related to this. We are running Exchange 2010 SP1. Any help would be appreciated.

If the account is disabled in AD, it should automatically hide it in the address book.

You should use the Exchange Management Console (EMC). For bulk-hiding, the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) would be more appropriate. Open the Properties dialog box for the mailbox-enabled user account by double-clicking the user name in the Exchange Management Console. On the General tab, select the Hide From Exchange Address Lists check box and then click OK You will see these changes almost immediately in OWA and Outlook in online mode. For cached mode, an update to the Offline Address Book must be generated, distributed and be downloaded by the clients. Exchange 2010 - Hide Mailbox from Global Address List http://mockbox.net/exchange-2010/384-exchange-2010-hide-mailbox-from-global-address-list.html MCTS: Messaging | MCSE: S+M

Hi, Try to hide it thru EMC as given below and then check. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff381467.aspx Anil MCC 2011,ITIL V3,MCSA 2003,MCTS 2010, My Blog : http://messagingschool.wordpress.com

This box is checked. I should have said I did this as well in the original post. We are thinking maybe the contacts list is also pulling from our Public Folders. Is there anywhere in the EMC to configure where the GAL is pulled from? I'd like to see if somewhere in there it tells to pull from the wrong list. When we go into the GAL in Webmail/OWA, and highlight the person, there is no organization drop down for them, if that makes sense. Most of the users have this drop down. At first I thought maybe they were set up as a contact in AD, but again, searching for them yields nothing.

The Default Global Address List is a collection of all mailbox-enabled users, mail-enabled users, mail-enabled contacts, dynamic distributions groups, mail-enabled groups, mail-enabled public folders, and system mailboxes in your Exchange organization. Perhaps you should issue Get-GlobalAddressList| Update-GlobalAddressList This should remove hidden users from the GAL. While about Exchange, this does also apply to Exchange 2010 (afaik). Address Lists in Exchange 2007 (Part 1) http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/address-lists-exchange-2007-part1.html MCTS: Messaging | MCSE: S+M

We figured it out. The person in charge of disabling was doing so in an Active Directory 2003 environment. When I opened the EMC it showed as disabled but must have missed telling the GAL somewhere. I had to uncheck the hide box, apply the settings, recheck the hide box, and apply the settings again. After doing this, it disappeared from the GAL. Going forward, he will hide from the EMC. Thanks everyone for the responses.

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:10:03 +0000, ty72182 wrote: >If the account is disabled in AD, it should automatically hide it in the address book. That's not true. If it were then "shared" mailboxes (where the accout is disabled) wouldn't show up. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP