Proxy addresses are not removed when the recipient policy is removed in Exchange Server

Proxy addresses that have been added to the e-mail addresses for users in Active Directory are not removed when the recipient policy that added the proxy address is removed from the Recipient Policies container of Microsoft Exchange System Manager. Even after you apply other recipient policies from the Exchange System Manager, the proxy addresses remain in Active Directory.

This behavior affects all proxy address types, which include Microsoft Mail (MSMAIL), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), GroupWise (GWISE), Lotus cc:Mail (ccMAIL), Lotus Notes (NOTES), and X.400.

This behavior is by design.

To work around this behavior, manually remove proxy addresses that are no longer needed from Active Directory.

NOTE: The following steps assume that the recipient policy has already been removed from Exchange System Manager.

To manually remove an unwanted proxy address:

1. Start Active Directory Users and Computers; click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
2. Open the configuration container that the user account is located in.
3. Click a user name, right-click the user name, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu.
4. In the properties, click the E-mail Addresses tab.
5. Click the proxy address that you want to delete, and then click Remove. Click Yes when a dialog box is displayed that prompts, "Are you sure you want to remove this e-mail address?"
6. Click OK to save the changes.
7. Repeat these steps for each user.

NOTE: To automate this process, you can write a script to remove the proxy addresses in batch mode. This method is beyond the scope of this article.