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perfectionmachinery

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Do I need to specify any email addresses (policy) in the Recipient Policies for Exchange Server 2003?

I administer a small LAN w/a single Exchange Server 2003.  I'm overdue to ask this question:

Typically, when adding a new user, I don't want the LAN user ID to be the same as the email recipient name.  e.g.  I may create a user ID of "ssmith" but want an email address of "sally@mydomain.com".  The Exchange Server default recipient policies, however, would automatically create an SMTP address for this user that = ssmith@mydomain.com.

I know I can manually change email addresses for each individual user.  What I'd like to do is simply not have the system automatically assign any email addresses at the time of user ID creation.  In short, I'd like to uncheck all email addresses listed in the Recipient Policies so that email addresses aren't generated automatically for me.  Is that possible?  If so, it it unwise to do that?

Any feedback appreciated.
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Brian Pierce
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when creating an email for a new user you change the "Alias" to what you want the users email to be.  Now if you want to change the @mydomain.com part to be a different domain you just add a domain that you want it to be and you make it the primary.  As far as I know you will have to change the users alias on creation (or later like you currently are doing) and there is not a policy that will do this for you.
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perfectionmachinery

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KCTS:  thanks for the link.  Good article.

So a recipient policy must exist.  Does that mean the policy must include checked items in the "Email Addresses (Policy)" tab?  I notice I have a multiple old (retired) items that are unchecked.  Wondering if I can simply uncheck them all.
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evenmcnally:  thanks, you answered the question above just as I was typing it.

Okay, so I'll keep the default SMTP and X400 addresses.

A few times in the past few years, the policies were re-applied.  (I don't recall the circumstances each time, unfortunately.)  One issue was, after being re-applied, the default primary email address was no longer the one I assigned; instead it was the system default = userid@mydomain.com.  Of course, it changed it for all users.  KCTS:  sounds like I can use the hints in the article to change the policy so this won't happen? i.e. have the primary email address set (or reset) to something like firstname@mydomain.com?
antioed:  yes, sounds like you answered my question above.  I think I what I need is custom recipient policy.  Specifically, one that sets the primary email address to "firstname@mydomain.com".

Seems as though I can manage that.  The question that follows is:  do I customize the default recipient policy or do I create a second recipient policy?
You can do either but seems like customizing the default policy is all you need here.  Either way...only the "matching" policy with the highest priority will be applied.
I hate to admit it, but KCTS has the best solution I think.  I would add this to the default policy as
%g@domain.com and set this rule as primary.  You would mainly do a second policy if you needed to apply a different rule only for some of your users (e.g. different policies for different departments).  If all users are firstname@domain.com then the default policy should work fine.
Very good.  I'll update/customize my default policy to reflect our preference of "firstname@mydomain.com".

Thanks to all of you for the info and for the rapid response.  Much appreciated and exactly what I needed.