Special characters resolve to same user in the GAL all the time in Online mode
Backstory I had a user complaint that they were getting an exceptionally high number of errant emails delivered to them and that the senders never remembered addressing the mails to them. I did some investigation after the user continued to have issues and discovered the following. If a sender is using Outlook 2007 in online mode and they place a . , ! @ # or any other special character in the to line and do a check name it always resolves to the user that is complaining about getting too many errant emails. If the sender is in cahced mode this behavior does not occur a special character generates a no match which is what we want. I am not even sure where I should begin looking. I was thinking ANR may have something to do with it, but why would all special characters resolve to a single user and only in Online Mode?
August 31st, 2010 8:46pm

On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:46:33 +0000, Marv1099 wrote: >Backstory > >I had a user complaint that they were getting an exceptionally high number of errant emails delivered to them and that the senders never remembered addressing the mails to them. > >I did some investigation after the user continued to have issues and discovered the following. > >If a sender is using Outlook 2007 in online mode and they place a . , ! @ # or any other special character in the to line and do a check name it always resolves to the user that is complaining about getting too many errant emails. > >If the sender is in cahced mode this behavior does not occur a special character generates a no match which is what we want. > >I am not even sure where I should begin looking. I was thinking ANR may have something to do with it, but why would all special characters resolve to a single user and only in Online Mode? Try adding a distribution list named "!do not send me mail" (and maybe ",do not send me mail", ".do not send me mail", etc.) to your AD. Don't add any members to the lists. Messages sent to the DL will just disappear. I'd guess that the person that's getting the e-mail is at the top of the GAL. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP
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September 1st, 2010 5:24am

I figured it out. My initial hunch was correct. It was related to ANR since it was only happening in online mode. The cause was a space in the Office field. I Schema Management to verify that the Office field was indeed used for ANR. Once I remove the space from the office field the behavior stopped. I added it back it began again. Typically a space will not be saved in an AD field because there is some validation logic in ADUC. We load these fields through an HR system sync program, and that is how the space actually ended up in there. You can also place a space in fields via ASDI or Attribute editor. Hope this helps others with the same problem. A space in any ANR field will cause online mode name resolution to resolve special characters to the user.
September 3rd, 2010 5:58pm

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