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Error when you create a mailbox in Exchange Server 2010: The term New-Mailbox is not recognized

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Exchange Server 2010 Enterprise, Exchange Server 2010 Standard

Original KB number:  2795751

Symptoms

Assume that a server is configured to use role-based access control (RBAC) or Active Directory split permissions in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 environment. When you try to create a new mailbox by using Exchange Management Console (EMC) or by running the New-Mailbox cmdlet in Exchange Management Shell (EMS), the operation fails, and you receive the following error message:

Error:
The term 'New-Mailbox' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

Note

When this issue occurs, you can still mail-enable an existing user account that was created in Active Directory.

Cause

This issue occurs because split permissions separate management tasks between Exchange administrators and Active Directory administrators.

Note

By default, Exchange 2010 uses the Exchange shared permissions model, which enables Exchange administrators to create user objects in Active Directory. In some organizations, this behavior is unacceptable. Therefore Exchange 2010 introduced the split permissions model. Split permissions can be configured by using RBAC (recommended) or through Active Directory (configured during the Exchange setup process).

Resolution

To resolve this issue, use EMS to change the RBAC split permissions. Or, run the Setup.com command at a command prompt to change the Active Directory split permissions to the default Exchange 2010 shared permissions.

For more information about how to change from RBAC split permissions or Active Directory split permissions to shared permissions, see How to configure Exchange 2010 to use shared permissions.

Note

You can't use EMC to change the RBAC split permissions or the Active Directory split permissions to shared permissions.

More information

For more information about split permissions, see General information about split permissions.