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Exchange Server Global Address List not displaying all contacts in Outlook 2003

This is a pretty strange problem. I am running Outlook 2003 connected to an Exchange Server 2003 machine. When I look at the Global Address List though Outlook's Address book, it only lists about half of the people that are part of the global address list. Yet, when I access the server through OWA, I can find all of them, and they are all correct. Similarly, I can directly browse the GAL from the Exchange Server, and I can find everyone fine. Furthermore, if I just type in the person's name when creating an e-mail, it will find it, but it is the wrong e-mail address (their e-mail address has been updated). I've tried rebuilding the Offline Address Book, and Send/Receiving just the address book in Outlook, with no luck. Another possible related issue is that the missing names are all part of a group. If they are not part of a group, then they aren't missng from the GAL. Finally, I've tried using different user's computers that all have different mailboxes and everything, and I still get the exact same thing. Any help?

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aa230002

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ragnarok416

ASKER

Well, your cache mode suggestion helped resolve the problem while the cached mode is off (thanks for that!) but after the cached mode is switched back on, it's back to normal. Perhaps it's updating the wrong file? What could cause that?

I would blame it on the profile, but there are 5-6 people on the exchange server, and the problem happens to all of them, so I don't suppose scrapping the profiles and redoing them would help anything, right?

Thanks!

aa230002

The problem might be with your Offline Address Book. If its not being generated properly and being downloaded by Outlook Clients. Moreover, OAB is generated once in 24 hours at 5AM by default. So, if we are using cache mode, we will not see the updated till next 24 hours.
So, i always prefer to remove cache mode while troubleshooting these kind of issues.

Try creating a new profile and also use cache mode this time to check if its the client side issue or the OAB issue.

Thanks,
Amit Aggarwal.

ragnarok416

ASKER

I tried creating another profile, and it worked properly for a moment. As soon as I did Send/Receive > Download address book, it was back to normal, which points the finger at the OAB. It's not a problem with the OAB generation period, because this has been going on for at least a week now, and I've told it to manually rebuild multiple times. Is there some way to competely scrap it, and start over?

-Matt

ragnarok416

ASKER

Oh, and also, I have the "Default Global Address List" listed under the Address Lists area in the "Default Offline Adress List", so that shouldn't be a problem.

-Matt

aa230002

Please refer to the following links to troubleshoot OAB issues.

Troubleshooting Offline Address Books
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/guides/OfflineAddressGuide/97fa2c4a-7408-41ba-a665-1104d0895fa7.mspx?mfr=true

XADM: Troubleshoot offline address book download issues
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811870

OAB version 4 in Exchange 2003 service pack 2 (SP2)
http://blogs.msdn.com/dgoldman/archive/2005/08/01/446071.aspx

Thanks,
Amit Aggarwal.

ragnarok416

ASKER

Finally figured it out! It appears that Exchange gets upset if the email address in the "General" tab of the profile for a user does not match up with a corresponding SMTP pointer in the "Email addresses" tab. Normally, if you update the email on the Exchange server itself, it will automatically add/change a SMTP pointer, but in my case, I updated the user's email addresses through the AD people search on my XP Pro computer. Appearently, if you do it that way, the server will not add a SMTP pointer for the e-mail in the user's profile, hence confusing the Offline Address List. I do find it strange that it would not affect the GAL itself, if that is such a problem, but whatever, at least it's working now.

I have the points to aa230002 for the help in pointing me in the right direction. Thanks!

-Matt