Hello on exchange 2010 can I add a mailbox only without adding a user. usually I do it the other way round and add a user which automatically adds a mailbox but this time I will need a seperate mailbox for particular users

A functional mailbox must be associated with an AD account. Also, you can only have one mailbox associated with an AD account. If you are trying to set up a shared mailbox for several users, I suggest creating a genenric AD account for that resource and creating the mailbox. Then you can give access rights to that mailbox for the other users. What scenario are you trying to accomplish?Tim Harrington - Catapult Systems - http://HowDoUC.blogspot.com

Hi, Why 2 mailbox are needed, you can just add another email ID to existing user. I don't think we can create a separate mailbox with creating a user.Ripu Daman Mina | MCSE 2003 & MCSA Messaging

In fact I have done what THHarrington has suggested. I created a user named ex. sales and gave full permission for the users who need to open this additional mailbox. My question was if it was possible to just create a mailbox without being associated with a user in ADUC however from the reply I got from you this is not possible . I cannot add an e-mail ID ( additional SMTP e-mail ) as this will not be a mailbox but will only go into the speciific user mailbox and if the user stops working and another one comes in all the e-mails would be lost as they will not ba as a seperate mailbox right ?

That is correct. If you delete the mailbox that has the additional SMTP address, then all the emails get deleted with it. I don't like to promote public folders, but maybe this is a good opportunity to set up a email enabled publich folder and give the appropriate access.Tim Harrington - Catapult Systems - http://HowDoUC.blogspot.com

but can I set the e-mail of the public folder as a seperate mailbox for the user or I add the e-mail as an additional smtp address ?

Hi, In fact I have done what THHarrington has suggested. I created a user named ex. sales and gave full permission for the users who need to open this additional mailbox. My question was if it was possible to just create a mailbox without being associated with a user in ADUC however from the reply I got from you this is not possible . After creating the mailbox, you can disable the AD account in ADUC. Then the users who has full access of this mailbox can still access this mailbox. Does it help your problem? Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. Thanks Gen Lin-MSFT

so you are saying that if I disable an account all users who have full access to it's e-mail will still receive new e-mails notwithstanding the account is disabled ?

On Mon, 11 Oct 2010 17:06:06 +0000, acmsoft wrote: >so you are saying that if I disable an account all users who have full access to it's e-mail will still receive new e-mails notwithstanding the account is disabled ? Yes. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

ok so altough the mailbox us tight to a particular user in this case it will ignore the status of the user in ADUC and accept new e-mails

On Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:39:34 +0000, acmsoft wrote: >ok so altough the mailbox us tight to a particular user in this case it will ignore the status of the user in ADUC and accept new e-mails Just because the user account that "owns" the mailbox is disabled doesn't mean it won't accept e-mail. If you don't want the mailbox to receive any new e-mail then you can take other action to prevent that. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP