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sittas87 91 Nearly a Posting Virtuoso

Hi
This may be a rather easy question. Ive deleted the users account and recreated it. The users email account is already up and running on his XP machine, But now I want to import his address book witch is resideing on the Server. Question is 1.Where can I find the address book on the server and 2. How do I import it
Thanks in advance for you're help

BTW Its an Exchange server

Thanks

Sittas

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Dani AI

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As described, an "address book" on Exchange can mean two different things: the Global Address List (GAL), which lives in Active Directory and is shown automatically to Outlook clients, and a user's personal Contacts folder, which lives inside that user's mailbox. When an account is deleted and then a new mailbox is created, the old mailbox (and its Contacts) often remains as a disconnected mailbox on the server for the mailbox‑retention period — it does not automatically merge into the newly created mailbox.

Practical recovery steps:

  • Check the server for disconnected mailboxes and reconnect the old mailbox to the recreated AD account using the Exchange admin tools (GUI or shell). For example, on modern Exchange servers the shell can list disconnected mailboxes with Get-MailboxStatistics -Database 'DBName' | Where-Object {$_.DisconnectDate -ne $null}; the GUI also exposes a "Connect" option. Reconnecting preserves the Contacts folder.
  • If the old mailbox was purged, restore from backup or mount a restored copy of the database and extract the Contacts (export to PST or import directly). For Exchange 2003 use tools like ExMerge; for later versions use the supported recovery/export workflow for that version.
  • If Contacts are on the client (PST/OST), use Outlook's Import/Export to bring them back.

Cautions: work from a copy/backup when restoring, do not overwrite the live mailbox, and avoid creating more new mailboxes for the same AD account until the disconnected mailbox check is complete.

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