XADM: Error generating OAB from large containers (188636)

SYMPTOMS

When attempting to generate the Offline Address Book (OAB) using the Global Address List or certain large containers, the following error message is generated:

An error occurred while generating the offline Address Book. To
view details, see the application event log in the Windows NT
Event Viewer on the offline Address Book server.

Microsoft Exchange Administrator
ID no. c1031662

The Event Viewer will log the following event:

   Event ID 5004
   Generation of the offline Address Book is complete. Result: An
   error occurred.

CAUSE

The above error is generated when the mailboxes or custom recipients in the containers have unique SMTP domains in their SMTP addresses.

For example, consider a recipient container called "Foreign Recipients" that contains custom recipients. Each of the custom recipients has an SMTP address that has the following format:

   Invalid_Name@<Alias>.Unused

Where <Alias> is the Alias of the custom recipient.

The above SMTP addresses may be generated by importing the custom recipients with predefined SMTP addresses instead of allowing the Exchange Server proxy generator to generate the SMTP address.

The idea behind generating SMTP addresses with the above format may be to prevent external users from being able to mail to the custom recipients.

When the Offline Address Book is being generated, if the number of SMTP domains in the SMTP addresses being added to the OAB is very large, the above error message is generated.

WORKAROUND

Change the SMTP addresses so that each recipient does not have a unique SMTP domain name. Normally, all recipients should have the same domain name in their SMTP addresses.

This can be done by exporting out the directory information for the affected recipients to a .csv file, using the Exchange Server Administrator program. On the Tools menu, click Directory Export. Then modify the SMTP address in the E-Mail Addresses column of the .csv file. Import the modified file back into the Exchange directory store.