Hello forum, Please bear with me as I am new to Exchange in general, and very new to the particular environment I'm working on right now. I have an Exchange 2003 server and several other machines (some Windows 2000, some Windows 2003) as domain controllers. I have an administrative PC set up with Exchange System Manager and Active Directory Users and Computers installed on it. My issue is with creating new users. In the past, I've been able to create a new AD account in AD Users and Computers, and that user "automatically" was set up with a mail account in Exchange. Now, this is not working. This is what I see as I try to set up a new user: 1) First, I open AD Users & Computers, drill down to an appropriate location, right click, and choose the option to create a new user. I get the little series of dialog boxes where I fill in appropriate info for the new user. I make sure to check the box for "Create an Exchange mailbox." The alias is pre-filled correctly, and the Server and Mailbox Store are defaulted correctly (I only have one server and one mailbox store, so this part is easy). Eventually I click "Finish" and the new user is finished. 2) If I IMMEDIATELY right click on the user and select Properties, then click on the Email Addresses tab, there are no entries, as expected, because the Recipient Update Service hasn't run. 3) A few minutes later, if I check again, once the RUS has run, the E-Mail Addresses tab has the correct info filled in on it, with the correct (four) addresses created. 4) At this point, in the past, everything would be set - the user could start using mail. However, recently, the process has failed. Even though the E-mail Addresses tab defaults correctly, the email account is never set up on the Exchange server. Attempts to log in to OWA fail (the username/password is not accepted). Email sent to any of the user's addresses bounces (with a "The e-mail account does not exist at the organization this message was sent to." error message). If I browse to Mailboxes under the Mailbox Store on the server in Exchange System Manager, the user's mailbox does not show up. Any thoughts? Is there anything obvious I'm missing or anywhere I should check to see why the mailbox is not created?

Your last observation, the mailbox not being there when you look in the store, is normal since the mailbox is not actually created in the database until the user has logged on or e-mail has been received into the mailbox. The mailbox creation process just sets the attributes in AD, and the RUS goes in and sets additional attributes. OWA should work as a point of first logon, perhaps you have some active directory replication latency. I can't tell you why it isn't working. Did you try creating an Outlook profile as well? Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Hi, Any update on your issue? Could you please paste the exact error when the new user logon to OWA? Have you tried to send an email to the new user? How things going? Could you see his/her mailbox when you expand the Mailboxes in the Mailbox Store node of EMS? Have you tried to create an Outlook profile? I look forward to hearing from your update. Best regards, Serena Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Looks like Ed nailed it. I must have way more latency on this network than I knew about. The next morning, the address started accepting mail, and poof! the mailbox appeared in Exchange System Manager. Thanks Serena for the offer to help but it looks like there was no issue after all.