Configure Specific E-Mail Addresses for Specific Exchange 2000/2003 Users

How do I configure some Exchange recipients to have different e-mail addresses in Exchange 2000/2003?

Exchange 2000/2003 will automatically configure e-mail addresses for your recipients, based on the name of your Active Directory domain.
For example, if you have an AD domain called TEST.HOME and you’ve installed Exchange 2000/2003 on it, each and every mailbox enabled user, mail enabled user, mail enabled group and mail enabled contact you have will automatically have an e-mail address of [email protected].
However sometimes we would like to configure other e-mail addresses for our recipients, for domains other than our own, internal domain name. Basically, Exchange can handle hundreds of mail domains without any problem (up to about 1000 domains), so performance is usually not an issue.
For example, some users might require additional e-mail addresses that will better reflect their position or role in the company (such as “support” or similar). You might also need to configure totally different e-mail addresses for other users, such as where these users work for a different subsidiary or even when you’re using one server to host multiple companies and therefore require different domain names for different recipients.
In all of the above examples you’ll need to configure Exchange to use new (or modified) Recipient Policies to reflect the change in the e-mail domain names. However, unlike the case described in my Configure Exchange 2000/2003 to Receive E-Mail for other Domains article, you cannot modify the Default Recipient Policy, because that will cause all your recipients to receive the new e-mail address. You will need to configure a new Recipient Policy and have it filter out the recipients it will effect.

1. Open the Exchange System Manager.
2. Navigate to the Recipients folder, expand it and go to Recipient Policies. Right-click Recipient Policies and choose New > Recipient Policy.

Note: You can also modify the existing Recipient Policy, but that will not allow you to choose specific users or recipients on whom you’d like the new policy to apply. This is because the Default Recipient Policy will not allow you to modify the LDAP search filter, and it will always apply to all the Exchange recipients in your organization. Read the Configure Exchange 2000/2003 to Receive E-Mail for other Domains article for more info.

1. In the Properties window of the new Recipient Policy, give the new policy an appropriate name, and click on the E-Mail Address Policy tab.

1. On the E-Mail Address Policy tab you can add all sorts of e-mail addresses, but the most common one is SMTP of course. Click New, choose SMTP and then configure your Internet E-Mail Domain name (the one you plan to add to all your Exchange recipients – users, groups, contacts and Public Folders). Remember to add a “@” sign before the new domain name. You can also select the new e-mail address to be the primary address (i.e. in bold, and it will be used as the e-mail address to where the replies to messages sent by your users will be sent). When you’re done click Ok.
   

1. Go back to the General tab and click on the Modify button to create the correct LDAP search filter.
   
   In the Find window select the appropriate search filter. You can use some of the built-in attributes or create your own set of attribute-based query.
   For example, you can choose only recipients that have mailboxes on a particular server:
   
   Or you can only select user-type recipients that are located within a specific store on a specific server and so on.
   Important Note: You are not required to create a filter! You can actually leave the filter option empty, and later manually add the required e-mail address to any user you want by using the AD Users and Computers snap-in. For example, if you only had a couple of users that need to accept email for a secondary domain, then you could simply create a new recipient policy with a blank filter and manually put the addresses on the two accounts.
   

   In this example I’ve used a query based upon the Department attribute of a user. Read my LDAP Search Samples for Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2000/2003 article for more info on the subject.
   
   When you’re done with the search filter click Ok. You can also click on the Find button and see the results your filter gave you. These will receive the new Recipient Policy’s settings, and if you’re satisfied with what you saw – click Ok.
   Read my Configure Specific E-Mail Addresses for Specific Exchange 2000/2003 Users article for more info on this issue.

1. Read the Exchange System Manager message that pops out and click Ok. Basically, this message tells you that if you plan to make changes to this filter you should then run the Apply Policy Now option.

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1. After you’ve set your new policy, you will now need to apply it. Right-click it and select Apply this Policy Now.

1. In order to make things happen faster, you’ll want to re-run the Recipient Update Service – or RUS – (both of them in most cases, all of them in case you have a few AD domains). Go to the Recipient Update Service folder and in the right pane right-click all the instances of the RUS you see, and select Update Now.

1. In order to test the success of the new Recipient Policy, go to one of the recipients that should have been affected by the new policy and see if the new e-mail address is listed in the recipient’s properties.

Done! In cases where the new e-mail address we’ve just configured is a sub-domain of your current existing domain you’ll need to contact your ISP or Name Server provider and ask them to add a sub-domain to your existing domain.
In cases where the new address is for a totally different domain you’ll need to configure the MX Records for the new domain. Without performing this step no one will ever know that your server is in fact serving this new domain. Read my Configure MX Records for Incoming SMTP E-Mail Traffic article for more info on this subject.
You can also test to see if your Exchange server is in fact willing to accept messages destined for this new domain. The best methods of testing can be found in the SMTP, POP3 and Telnet in Exchange 2000/2003, Send Mail from Script and Test SMTP Service in IIS and Exchange articles.

Related articles

You might also want to read the following related articles:

• Configure Specific E-Mail Addresses for Specific Exchange 2007 Recipients
• Configure Exchange 2000/2003 to Receive E-Mail for other Domains
• Configure MX Records for Incoming SMTP E-Mail Traffic
• Import Saved Queries in Windows Server 2003 AD Users & Computers
• LDAP Search Samples for Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2000/2003
• Saved Queries in Windows Server 2003 AD Users & Computers
• Working with Query Based Distribution Groups in Exchange 2003