Here is an interesting one, not come across it before.

We have some recipients in the global address list that dont have mailboxes but are listed as contacts (they have a globe next to their name). We have loads of them and they all work fine. Today I try to add another one, exactly the same as the others but it doesnt work. When trying to send to the recipient I get an undeliverable bounce back with the text.

"The e-mail address could not be found. Perhaps the recipient moved to a different e-mail organization, or there was a mistake in the address. Check the address and try again.The MTS-ID of the original message is"

there is more text relative to the server/domain etc.

Has anyone seen this before, I did a google and came up with something to do with the "Recipient update service", so I have forced a rebuild of it, but is it going to fix my problem. Existing contacts still work just fine.

The message doesnt get as far as our SMTP gateway, exchange is going dolally before it gets that far.

This is in the eventlog of the server thats supposed to forward the message to the internet. servernames and other details have been changed. This relates to the exchange MTA.

A non-delivery report (reason code unable-to-transfer and diagnostic code unrecognised-OR-name) is being generated for message C=US;A= ;P=aaaaa;L=servername-070725143016Z-40770. It was originally destined for DN:/o=organisation/ou=domain/cn=Recipients/cn=contactname;C=US;A= ;P=aaaaaa;O=domain;S=contactname;G=firstname; (recipient number 1), and was to be redirected to . [MTA DISP:RESULT 18 136] (12)

it reads like its trying to route the message using X400 and not SMTP for some reason,

Do the existing contacts still work?

Had a similar problem in my last company that turned out to be related to not having a smarthost defined, it may not help you because the email system we used was complicated, having three separate messaging systems serving the same email domains, so the MTA was bouncing messages for unresolved addresses in the domain instead of forwarding them on to borderware to be routed correctly.

Yes the existing ones still work, one of them is my home email address that forwards all my email from work home and it works fine. I should add that the server that does the internet bit is running exchange 5.5 with the active directory connector.

It gets more interesting,

I tried to change an existing contact that works, the changes all appear to be displayed and saved in active directory/users and computers, BUT when sending to that address its still using the old settings.

So, something funny is going on with exchange and I am stuck.

How did it go with checking the recipient update services, did they both check out ok mate?

Has there been a change made to the recipient policies at all? or maybe one has been inadvertantly trashed?

I had a similar problem once, and I moved the RUS to a different exchange server, forced an update and addressing "fixed" itself, moved it back to the original server later and it was fine.

Edit, just had a quick look on technet after reading the post about 5.5, the 5.5 server does not have a . in it's hostname does it?

No dot,

I am at home now, and running through all the windows and exchange 2003 updates, will then reboot both the exchange 5.5 and 2003 servers and see what happens.

Well, it seems the updates and reboot have cleared the problem.

chalk another win for the "switch it off and back on again" tactic