SELF Permission on Exchange Mailboxes

Daniel Petri

Jan 8, 2009

Why is the SELF permission the only permission seen on the Mailbox Rights properties on Exchange 2000/2003 mailboxes?

MS KB 272153 has more info:

In Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server or Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, when you create new mailbox-enabled accounts in Active Directory, they do not have inherited mailbox rights. The only object that is granted permission is Self, which is granted full mailbox access and read rights.

To view mailbox rights, follow these steps:

In Active Directory Users and Computers, click Advanced Features on the View menu.

Note: This is not necessary on Exchange Server 2003 because of the fact that the Exchange Advanced tab is exposed by default.

Under Active Directory Users and Computers, click the account, click the Exchange Advanced tab, and then click Mailbox Rights.
The rights are displayed in the Permissions for account name dialog box.

= Bad!

This behavior occurs because the mailbox security descriptor is not read from the Active Directory account object until the user logs on or gets mail. The Recipient Update Service (RUS) does not stamp the inherited permissions when the mailbox is created. After the mailbox is created in the store, the store calculates inherited mailbox rights.

To resolve this behavior perform one of the following actions:

Log on to the mailbox you’ve created. You can do so by opening an Outlook profile for the new user and running Outlook, or by opening a OWA session the the destination mailbox by typing http://servername/exchange/username in the address bar of your browser.

Note: Opening Outlook requires you to be logged on as the destination user, while OWA does not require you to be logged on as the user. However, both methods require that you know the destination user’s password.

Send a message to the mailbox.

Note: The second method is quicker and easier to perform, that’s why you’ll need to know how to Send Mail from Script and to Test SMTP Service in IIS and Exchange.

When the mailbox is created in the store, the store itself calculates the inherited permissions and stamps them on the store’s copy of the mailbox security descriptor.

= Good