Here's the situation on exchange 2003 1. we had two totally separate unrelated exchange servers with one separate domain on each. 2. server #1 had contacts in it for server #2 in the global address list. 3. We decided to merge all email onto server #1. So contacts were deleted in server 1, recipient policy was changed to add domain from mail #2, and then I added smtp addresses to server 1. These were the same as I deleted. so basically we had foo.com and bar.com and in foo.com contacts for bar.com. DNS was updated and recipient policy was updated so the foo.com server now hosts for foo.com and bar.com. We had for example jdoe@foo.com and johndoe@bar.com. now I added johndoe@bar.com as an smtp address on foo.com but first deleted the contact that already had this address. I couldnt add it as an smtp address on the user's domain account until the contact was deleted. When I send email from the outside world to either address... it works fine. If I send it internally from my foo.com account using outlook connected to exchange, I get "The e-mail account does not exist at the organization this message was sent to. Check the e-mail address, or contact the recipient directly to find out the correct address." so it works from the outside, but not internally. looking at the contacts of the properties I will see smtp:johndoe@bar.com x400:c=US;a=;p=FOO;o=Exchange;s=Doe;g=John; smtp:jdoe@foo.com but when I send to johndoe@bar.com from my foo.com address it fails (it is indeed hitting the right new server, not the old server). The email address it says failed is there as an smtp address and works from an outside email. any thoughts? Thanks, Adam

one other thing I noticed - when the email comes back.. it shows as it was going to the original contact that was deleted. Those contacts had EC on the end of the name to denote east coast location. I have checked in the address book and indeed the contacts are gone.. sowhy is it still referring to them when the email comes back? The system has been rebooted after the new domain was set and services have been restarted since the contacts have been removed as well.