Five and a half ways to find an email address in Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory

Every once in a while you try to assign a particular address to a recipient in Active Directory Users & Computers, only to be told someone already has that address! Email addresses need to be unique — two recipients can’t have the same email address.

Here are a few different ways to find out whether an email address is already used, and the recipient it belongs to.

1. Resolve recipient in Outlook or OWA

   Create a new message in Microsoft Outlook or OWA, enter the email address and then press CTRL-K. If the recipient is not hidden from Address Lists/GAL, the email address resolves to the recipient’s Display Name.

2. Request a delivery receipt

   If the recipient is hidden from Address Lists, send a message to it and request a Delivery Receipt. The Delivery Receipt option is on the Options tab in Outlook.

   
   Figure 1: Select the Request a Delivery Receipt option in Outlook 2013

3. Search in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC)

   If you’re on Exchange 2013 or Exchange Online, you can use the EAC to easily search recipients. Go to Recipients > Mailboxes and type the address in the search box.

   
   Figure 2: Use the search box in the EAC in Exchange 2013 and Exchange Online

   The caveat, and the reason why this only counts as half – when you’re on the Recipients > Mailboxes page in EAC, you can only search mailboxes. To search other types of recipients such as distribution groups, you would have to navigate to the corresponding tab or page in EAC. There’s an Advanced Search option in EAC, but it also limits the recipient type (selected via a drop-down) to the page/tab you’re on. For example, if you’re on the Mailboxes tab, the available Recipient types options are user mailbox, linked mailbox, legacy mailbox and remote user mailbox. Similarly, on the Groups tab, the options are mail-enabled distribution group, mail non-universal group, mail universal security group and dynamic distribution group.

   
   
   Figure 3: Advanced Search in EAC restricts the search to recipient types you can search

4. Find email addresses using PowerShell/Exchange Management Shell (Exchange 2013/2010/2007)

   In Exchange 2007 and later, you can use the Shell to easily and quickly find an email address. To get a list of recipients with a particular email address:

   get-recipient | where {$_.emailaddresses -match “[email protected]”} | select name,emailaddresses

   To get a list of all recipients with email addresses from a particular domain:

   get-recipient | where {$_.emailaddresses -match “domain.com”} | select name,emailaddresses

5. Use a Saved Query in Active Directory Users and Computers

   1. In Active Directory Users & Computers (on Windows Server 2003), right-click Saved Queries container | New | Query
   2. Enter a name for the query, and click the Define Query button
   3. From the Find drop-down – select Custom Search | go to Advanced tab
   4. In the Enter LDAP Query text box, enter the query:

      (proxyAddresses=smtp:[email protected])

   This returns recipients of all types – users, mail-enabled contacts, public folders, and groups that have the address [email protected].

   Click here to see a Flash demo.

   
   Figure 4: Use a custom query in Active Directory Users and Computers console

6. Using CSVDE/LDIFDE to find an email address

   Saved Queries isn’t available in the Windows 2000 version of ADUC. You can also use CSVDE or LDIFDE to export this information to a file, using the following command:

   csvde -f outputfilename.csv -d “dc=domain,dc=com” -r “(&(mailnickname=*)(proxyAddresses=smtp:[email protected]))” -l name

   Replace “dc=domain,dc=com” with your Active Directory domain name and suffix, and [email protected] with the exact email address you’re looking for.

   To find all recipients who have an email address from a particular SMTP domain, you can use a wildcard, e.g.:

   csvde -f outputfilename.csv -d “dc=domain,dc=com” -r “(&(mailnickname=*)(proxyAddresses=smtp:*@domain.com))” -l name

   In the above example, only the name field is exported. All CSVDE/LDIFDE queries also return the object’s distinguishedName. To add more fields to the list, insert a coma after name and type new field names separated by a coma: e.g.

   name,displayName,sAMAccountName,proxyAddresses,homeMDB

Tags
Administration   Exchange 2007   Exchange 2010   Exchange 2013   Mailbox   PowerShell