Changing a user's on-premises photo in an Exchange hybrid deployment doesn't change the user's photo in Office 365

Assume that you have a hybrid on-premises deployment of Exchange Server and Exchange Online in Office 365 in which one or more users have mailboxes that are hosted in the cloud. You change an Office 365 user's photo by accessing that user's on-premises information.

You expect the photo�to be synced from the on-premises environment and�to be displayed in the user's Exchange Online profile.�Instead, the user's previous Exchange Online profile photo is displayed.�

In Office 365, user photos are stored in the following locations:

• A low-resolution photo (less than 100 KB) is stored in the user�s�ThumbnailPhoto�attribute in Active Directory.
• A higher-resolution photo is stored in the root directory of the user�s Exchange Online mailbox.

The ThumbnailPhoto�attribute is used�in Lync 2010 and for external contacts.�High-resolution photos are displayed in Exchange Online, Lync 2013, and Lync Web App.�

To update the photo that's used in Exchange Online, Lync 2013, and Lync Web App, the user must update their photo�by using Outlook Web App. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to Outlook Web App, and then click options.
2. On the options page, click Edit information.
3. On the account information page, click photo, and then click browse.
4. Browse to the picture that you want to use for your user photo, and then select it.
5. Wait for the picture to upload. This may take some time, depending on the size of the picture and the network connection.�

For more information about user photos in Office 365, see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Still need help? Go to the Office 365 Community website.