Exchange 2010 Gotcha – #4

Public Folder Contacts Can’t Replicate

If you have a public folder contact that includes an e-mail address, there is also an e-mail address type field that is associated with every e-mail address.

Note: You cannot see this e-mail address type field by default – but it’s still there. To view it, go to a Contacts folder in Outlook and create a custom view. In that view, add “Full Name”, then select “E-Mail Address Fields” and add “E-Mail Address” and “E-Mail Address Type”. Now, examine the Contacts in the folder using the custom view. You’ll see e-mail address types such as “SMTP” for external Internet contacts, “EX” for internal organization e-mail contacts, “FAX” if you have a fax connector installed, etc.

Now, Exchange 2003 (and perhaps Exchange 2007 – I have not checked in my lab) allowed two differerent e-mail address types to indicate “SMTP”. I believe this to be a hold-over from Outlook 97, although I have no documented proof of that (but in Outlook 97 we had “Internet mode” and “Corporate or Workgroup mode” – so it makes sense). The two different types are “SMTP” and “POP3/INTERNET”.

“POP3/INTERNET” is not valid in Exchange 2010. If you attempt to replicate a public folders to Exchange 2010 that contains this e-mail address type, the replication will abort. Thankfully, you do receive an event log error message that provides SOME clues about this occurring. The error looks like this:

Event Type:      Error
Event Source:    MSExchange Store Driver
Event Category:  (1)
Event ID:        1020
Date:            5/11/2010
Time:            10:00:43 AM
User:            N/A
Computer:        exchmb2.example.com
Description:
The store driver couldn't deliver the public folder replication message "Folder Content Backfill Response (exchmb1-IS@example.com)" because the following error occurred: Property validation failed. Property = [{00062004-0000-0000-c000-000000000046}:0x8082] Email1AddrType Error = The length of the property is too long. The maximum length is 9 and the length of the value provided is 13... For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

What you will have to do is, using Outlook, obtain a list of all the affected contacts as described above, and also using Outlook, change the address type to SMTP.

In Outlook 2010, you can directly edit this field. In Outlook 2007, you will need to open each contact, right click on the e-mail address in the default display, and select Properties. Then, for the Address Type field, click the “Internet” button (this changes the e-mail address type to “SMTP” – the button will now display “Custom”). Then “Save and Close” the updated contact.

In my migrations, I’ve only had a maximum of about 150 of these. If you have thousands, you will probably need to consider writing a webdav application/script to run against the Exchange 2003 server(s).

Until next time…

If there are things you would like to see written about, please let me know.


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