employee getting married - best way to change her last name

There are two ways of dealing with this.

1. Rename the account. Simply right click on the user account and choose rename. Make the change and press enter. You will get a prompt. Complete the boxes.
Then go in to the user properties, click on the email addresses tab and ADD the new married name to the email addresses list and set it as default.
You can also change the login name.

Positives: Email continues to flow in correctly.
Negatives: Profile name on the computer is the old name, and the alias is the same (That is the bit that is after her name in < > - Jane Smith <jbloggs>)

If you change the alias, then any one replying to email sent by her internally will have to delete her from the To: line and reselect from the address book. Also affects auto complete fields in Outlook.
Doesn't affect external email.

2. Setup a new account.
Move all SMTP addresses across. Setup a forward on the old account to point to the new account.

Positives: Everything is in the new name. Email flows internally and externally without any interruption. Users auto complete fields update naturally.

Negatives: You have to move everything. Permissions, group memberships, email content etc.

This one very much depends on the lady involved. Sometimes they are happy to accept some of their old name floating around. Others want everything changed and the IT department have very little choice.

Simon.

Thanks Simon-

how do I "Move all SMTP addresses across"?

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/expert/KnowledgebaseAnswer/0,289625,sid43_gci1116552,00.html

 QUESTION POSED ON: 17 August 2005
I have a user that got married and now wants to change her e-mail address to reflect her new last name. How do I do this, and have e-mails that are sent to the old address redirected to the new one? We are running Windows Server 2003, Active Directory and Exchange Server 2003.  

 
> EXPERT RESPONSE
You will want to do the following:
Change the display name of the mailbox to the new married name.

Add a secondary SMTP address reflecting the new married name -- but don't delete the 'old' SMTP address.

Set the new SMTP address you added as the primary address.
The mailbox will then receive mail sent to the old address and the new address. The reply-to address will be set to the new address.
 
 

how do I "Move all SMTP addresses across"?   ---- just manually recreate the same SMTP addresses that the old user account had into the new user account.   go in to the user properties, click on the email addresses tab and ADD the new married name to the email addresses list + all of the old SMTP addresses listed in the original user account.

If you are creating a new mailbox, then the old mailbox needs to have at least one email address on it. This can be a dummy address - so old.user.name@domain.com (where user.name is their old address). Then simply remove the SMTP addresses from the old account and put them on the new account.

Simon.

thanks Atari

then the user would log in as the new alias? with new desktop/profile?

thanks

The "Alias" that has been posted above by Atari911 is an EMAIL alias. It doesn't change anything on the account at all.

Simon.

The user would still login the same (with the same user name and desktop). You would not be changing the Active Directory user login name but only the alias's that exchange uses for the email address.

For instance the user "Bob" could have multiple email addresses that all point to the user "Bob" in the active directory.

If the users active directory name has to change you can just rename the AD account and the user should not loose any information such as desktop/settings because the UID will stay the same and it will still point to the email address aliases that you made.

 

thanks atari-

so i will:
1. create alias with new smtp address, make it primary
2. change a.d. name to new name

she logs in as new name and sends/receives mail as new name, with the same desktop profile. no need to change security groups etc.
is that right?

Yes.
The user will be able to logon and recieve mail with the new user name, while keeping all her old settings and also recieving mail from her old email address.

ok- one problem- i created another a.d. account with her new name a couple weeks ago. can i delete then, go ahead with #1 and #2?

thanks.

These are the same options that I outlined in my original post above.
If you decide to simply rename the account, you need to take in account the issues I raised in my post above - that you can stop auto complete and replying to old emails from working correctly.

Simon.

But you would want the reply's to be pointed to the new email address. I am assuming that the person who had a change in last name would, over time, end up wanting all email to migrate to her new name email address. The main problem would be if she could not recieve emails going to her old address which she still will able to after these changes.

Granted I missed the part on putting a new email address on to the existing user account. It was 1am when I posted that response, so I was probably a little tired.

However there are still the same issues with using the old account - specifically the alias (not SMTP email alias, but the Exchange alias) possibly showing the old name. That is why I tend to suggest a new account and then forward the email around.

Simon.

Never had a problem with the alias's. Forwarding would work as well but it just seems like that would be extra work.

thanks-

atari- can i delete the new a.d. account i created for her, then continue?
thanks

As long as you have not pulled anything over to the account that you are deleting.

When it comes to newly married or newly divorced women, the IT department usually has to put up with is asked for, no matter what the work involved. Particularly when it is a divorce, the female usually wants all reference to the old name removed (I have been asked if it was possible to change all emails in the store to reflect the new name) but the old email needs to work. Based on bitter experience the new account method is the only one that works effectively and meets the requirements of old emails and auto complete working, while the new name is the only one that is seen.

Simon.