Thursday, January 04, 2007

Exchange GAL updating

I've been beating myself over the head for a while now trying to figure out why my GAL (Global Address List) wasn't updating in Outlook when I make changes to a user account or AD object. When you create users in AD even if they are test users they will show up in the GAL if you are not copying a preexisting configured template. We try to keep our GAL clean and free of all the crap that we test but some times if we don't delete the accounts or can't for that matter they show up in the GAL. So I would go in and hide the user from the GAL. Exchange/Outlook is funny where you have to either close outlook and reopen it for the changes to show or restart the Information store to force the change. Well recently I remember one of my colleagues saying it was best to have Outlook cache mode on. I sort of disagreed but I turning it on anyway and forgot about it. So I get to request to clean up the GAL. I proceed to do so and low and behold the names in GAL still show up. I remember this happening in the past a restart of the Information Store always fixed it. Not this time. Then I go and check Outlook to see if it was caching and yes as I mentioned before I forgot that I turned caching on and it was keeping all of the information. Don't know why cache insists on keeping the information even after restarting the Information Store and restarting outlook. A safety net perhaps?