Please with respect on Hosted Exchange 2007, if a reseller/support provider & customers use same system/provider then customers can't use their supplier's email address as a centralised contact for automated server reports. Likewise if a customer's contact already exists the supplier on the same system can't register even their own email address under their own domain. Would this occur if independent organisations need to use the same contact address? Can Microsft be encouraged to fix this serious anomaly with the directory with the increasing transition to hosted exchange? Is this also an issue with Exchange Server 2010 Enterprise? Many Thanks, John To-day's transcript:Customer ChatChat Transcript Please wait while we find an agent to assist you...You have been connected to <Representative>. <Representative>: Thank you for contacting <Provider> Email & Apps support. How may I assist you today? JOHN: JOHN, Totality Enterprise Ltd. (again) #859934. Move went successfully no problem , thanks. Another issue... JOHN: Moving my own email to <Provider>. Created mailbox. Fine. Adding alternate email addresses system went to login screen when I clicked save. It now says an email address I'm trying to add is not unique: auto-report@totality.biz <Representative>: one minute please JOHN: It won't let me save it. As though the transaction corrupted. Can you help? <Representative>: Give me few minutes and I'll look into this JOHN: No Problem :-) JOHN: I'm guessing, incidentally, that my mobile broadband either cut out briefly or issued a new IP. <Representative>: still looking into. Thank you for your patience. Give me few more minutes please JOHN: Don't worry about time. I'm an MCSE familiar with servers & exchange. <Representative>: I see you used up all the mailboxes JOHN: I only need one mailbox & send all emails for alternate totality.biz addresses to that. I work alone or with a subcontractor at present. <Representative>: So you wanted to add auto-report@totality.biz in john@totality.biz <Representative>: I already did JOHN: Ok. Thanks. Will it appear in the control panel now? <Representative>: yes <Representative>: check please JOHN: Hmmm. Not yet <Representative>: I see it under Email Addresses <Representative>: That is where you create a mail alias JOHN: I only see the other three. Should I logout then in again? Will I lose the chat session? <Representative>: yes please <Representative>: I am sorry <Representative>: Now I am getting the same error <Representative>: The alternate address auto-report@totality.biz is not unique <Representative>: let me try another step JOHN: Don't worry, <Representative>, problems happen :-) <Representative>: Thanks John <Representative>: give me few minutes please JOHN: It's not appearing. I closed the session and started IE again with another session. It's not there. Would you like to remove it and I'll try again alter from the control panel? <Representative>: For some reason it takes autoreport@totality.biz <Representative>: but not auto-report@totality.biz <Representative>: ok <Representative>: I see auto-report@totality.biz <Representative>: as contact on your other domain <Representative>: that is why, it's not letting us JOHN: I don't mind it not appearing in the control panel providing it can be received. I don't really want to change it since it means changing all my customers' exchange server and my Outlook rule. If entered into exchange manually through Exchange System Manager - if that's what you did - can you confirm it works? JOHN: Yes, autoreport without the hyphen is there now. <Representative>: right <Representative>: as I was saying, the reason it is not taking the dash becuase you already have auto-report@totality.biz <Representative>: as a contact on your other domain <Representative>: So you need to remove that contact and add it here JOHN: Now I understand. But that means I can't send automated reports from my customer's server using distribution groups to include me as a contact and use that address as a contact in my own domain? JOHN: How do we get over this? JOHN: Correction. ...use that address for a mailbox in my own domain? <Representative>: I am sorry. But I lost you there <Representative>: You have john@totality.biz which is your mailbox and you are creating those alias so emails can be delivered to john@totality.biz JOHN: My customers server sends reports to globaladministrators@<customer's Domain>,org. Their contact auto-report@totality.biz is a member of that group thus the reports are sent out to auto-report@totality.biz. I therefore need to receive emails sent to auto-report@totality.biz. Unfortunately Microsoft Exchange Enterprise won't allow that even though the contact auto-report@totality.biz is an outgoing address only. Thus we neeed a fix from Microsoft since this limits one of your customers using a contact address that is for another of your customers. This clearly should not be given that they're different domains thus it is a Microsoft Bug? <Representative>: Good question. The reason behind that error is because that email address is within the <Provider> system. That is why. And unfortunately there is no work around for this JOHN: Regrettably I'm going to have to defer the move to <Provider> temporarily but this will be common to all hosting providers using Exchange. Please could I ask you to raise a service ticket and ask <Provider> to contact Microsoft for a fix on this. It is unreasonable for them to disallow one customer having a contact within their domain to another customer on another domain who uses the address as their email address. Please could you confirm? JOHN: It's not going to be an unique problem as people move rapidly to coud services. It is in fact a serious issue for Hosting Providers using Exchange. JOHN: ...cloud services that is :-) <Representative>: Sure. I'll contact my team lead about this. :) JOHN: Ok. Well many thanks for your help once again. I do fully understand there's nothing immediate you can do about this. I'll contact a few people myself on this discreetly leaving <Provider> name out of this since it's clearly not limited to them. Best wishes & Thanks again. John <Representative>: Thanks for contacting us JohnWith best regards John