We are a University just implementing Exchange 2010 for our staff. All of our student email has been outsourced to a 3rd party (gmail). Staff and students both have user accounts stored within the same AD structure (albeit in different OUs). As staff are exchange enabled we can populate various Address Lists with their details. However the staff are unable to access any information about students through the address book. We tried adding the mailNickname attribute to a student account, but Exchange just complained that it wasn't able to update the account when RUS was ran. How can we add student accounts to the Global Address List and other address lists without making them full exchange accounts? can their accounts be made to act like a contact object? The student accounts have their email address already populated in the mail attribute. Ideally we are looking for a method that can be batch ran given that we have 40k+ student accounts, powershell or just the specific values that are needed to be populated so it can be done programatically. P.S. we can't be the only place wanting to do this?! so someone must have done this or similar. Thanks Steve

You have a few terminology issues. Staff are not "Exchange enabled". Staff are "Mailbox Enabled". The students have Active Directory accounts but are not, yes, "Mail Enabled". those two are very different states. Accounts can be mail enabled so that they appear in the GAL but do not have a mailbox where mail is delivered. There are a ton of ways that you can do this, PowerShell is one of them and yes, in a bulk manner. http://www.google.com/search?q=create+mail+enabled+user&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&q=create+mail+enabled+user+powershell&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=499faa430ac3503f "nevets81" wrote in message news:c23ffb3e-fc59-4784-9074-6c4602f7db03... We are a University just implementing Exchange 2010 for our staff. All of our student email has been outsourced to a 3rd party (gmail). Staff and students both have user accounts stored within the same AD structure (albeit in different OUs). As staff are exchange enabled we can populate various Address Lists with their details. However the staff are unable to access any information about students through the address book. We tried adding the mailNickname attribute to a student account, but Exchange just complained that it wasn't able to update the account when RUS was ran. How can we add student accounts to the Global Address List and other address lists without making them full exchange accounts? can their accounts be made to act like a contact object? The student accounts have their email address already populated in the mail attribute. Ideally we are looking for a method that can be batch ran given that we have 40k+ student accounts, powershell or just the specific values that are needed to be populated so it can be done programatically. P.S. we can't be the only place wanting to do this?! so someone must have done this or similar. Thanks Steve Mark Arnold, Exchange MVP.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the distinction between mail enabled and mailbox enabled.