Cry Exchange How To...

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How to disable delivery of email to an account without deleting the mailbox or removing email addresses

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Suppose you need to ensure that no email is delivered to an account but you need to keep the mailbox and the account. There are a few options open to you:

• Apply delivery restrictions (my preferred)
• Apply storage limits (has side effects)
• Change email addresses (has side effects)

My preferred technique is to apply delivery restrictions, but I've included the other methods for completeness.

If you only need to maintain emails but do not need the mailbox to be available online then an alternative approach is to extract the emails into a stand-alone archive.

Other things to consider:

• Hide from address book
• Disable account

Apply delivery restrictions (my preferred)

This is my preferred technique: It delivery restrictions to restrict who can delivery email to the account, effectively disabling receipt of emails from everyone:

1. On the server running Exchange start "Active Directory Users and Computers"
2. Find the account.
3. Double click the account to open its properties (or right click and select "Properties")
4. On the "Exchange General" tab, click [Delivery Restrictions...].
5. Under "Message restrictions" check "From authenticated users only". Then select the radio button "Only from" and add the user account. It is important that you add a user account here otherwise Exchange will accept email from any authenticated user. I find adding the user account (so in effect saying only accept emails from yourself) is quit effective.
6. Click [OK] to close the "Delivery Restrictions" dialog and [OK] again to close the account properties dialog.

Any emails sent to the account will be rejected with an NDR, so externally there will be no apparent difference between trying to send to this account and one which does not exist.

See also the complementary ideas: "Hide from address book" and "Disable account"

Use storage limits

An alternative approach is to set a storage limit on the account, preventing emails fro being received.

1. On the server running Exchange start "Active Directory Users and Computers"
2. Find the account.
3. Double click the account to open its properties (or right click and select "Properties")
4. On the "Exchange General" tab, click [Storage Limits...].
5. Uncheck "Use mailbox store defaults", then check "Prohibit send and receive at (KB):" and enter "1".
6. Click [OK] to close the "Storage Limits" dialog and [OK] again to close the account properties dialog.

This will prevent emails

Disadvantages:

• Some warning messages may appear in the inbox warning that the mailbox is over quota.
• Any emails sent to the account will bounce back with a message that the user's inbox is full.
• This also prevents emails from being sent.

Depending on the reasons for wanting to prevent the receipt of emails, these effects may not be desirable.

Change email address

Email addresses associated with the user account can be deleted or changed.

1. On the server running Exchange start "Active Directory Users and Computers"
2. Find the account.
3. Double click the account to open its properties (or right click and select "Properties")
4. On the "E-mail Addresses" tab any email addresses can be edited or removed. It is not possible to remove the primary email address (without also removing the mailbox), so this technique is open to allowing some emails to sneak into the account's mailbox.

Disadvantages:

• Since you cannot remove the primary email address (but can rename it) you cannot guarantee that no emails will be received - should someone acquire (or spam) the new email address then the account will accept the email.
• The old email address is no longer available, so unless you have good record keeping it is not possible to guarantee that the old email addresses can be restored if need be.

Depending on the reasons for wanting to prevent the receipt of emails, these effects may not be desirable.

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The following ideas should be regarded as complements to disabling delivery of email. They do not in themselves prevent email delivery, but may be desirable nevertheless.

Hide from address book (complementary)

Hiding an account from the address book prevents others in the domain from seeing the account in their address books. This makes it difficult (but not impossible) for them to send emails or meeting requests to the account. Since it only makes it difficult but does not absolutely prevent emails being sent, it is only complementary to the above techniques.

To hide an account from the address list:

1. On the server running Exchange start "Active Directory Users and Computers"
2. Find the account.
3. Double click the account to open its properties (or right click and select "Properties")
4. On the "Exchange Advanced" tab, check "Hide from Exchange address lists" then click [OK].

Be aware that Exchange normally updates the address book over night so this change will not be effective immediately. If you want to update the address book immediately then see "How to force the address book to update"

Disable account (complementary)

Disabling an account prevents anyone from logging in using the account. It does not prevent emails from being sent tot he account, nor will it prevent others (who have the necessary permissions) from reading emails in the account.

However, depending on why you want to disable email delivery, you may also want to disable the account.

To disable an account:

1. Start "Active Directory Users and Computers"
2. Find the account.
3. Right click on the account and select "Disable account"

Since on its own disabling an account does not prevent email delivery this approach is merely complementary

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These notes have been tested with Exchange Server 2003, with Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003.