Exchange 2007 and Recipient Type Details

Now that you have been working with Exchange 2007 for a while, you may notice that in the Exchange Management Console, there are a few new things that you see.  One of these is that when you look at objects, you now see a column labeled Recipient Type Details.  This is, in fact, a new attribute that has been added for Exchange 2007.  There is another attribute called Recipient Display Type.  You will not see them with this name in AD, however.  The mapping is as follows:

Recipient Display Type = msExchRecipientDisplayType
Recipient Type Details = msExchRecipientTypeDetails

These two attributes are new attributes that are added to the Active Directory Schema during Exchange 2007 setup. They are used in determining the type of recipient in the Address Book. They are displayed in the Exchange Management Console under Recipient Configuration, and in Exchange Management Shell if you perform a get- command and instruct the shell to return the full list (i.e. Get-Mailbox | fl )

Like many other Active Directory Attributes, these are represented by Integer Values in Active Directory.  One important item to note here is that you do not want to be arbitrarily changing these values.  The Recipient Display Type is something that should only be set by Exchange.  Changing it via any other method is not supported.

I've included a couple of tables for reference.  The first table covers the different values that can be assigned to the Recipient Display Type attribute.

Object Type	RecipientDisplayType (Binary)	Decimal Value	Value Name
Universal Distribution Group	00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001	1	DistributionGroup
Universal Security Group	01000000 00000000 00000000 00001001	1073741833	SecurityDistributionGroup
Dynamic Distribution Group	00000000 00000000 00000000 00000011	3	DynamicDistributionGroup
Linked Mailbox, Shared Mailbox, or User Mailbox	01000000 00000000 00000000 00000000	1073741824	ACLableMailboxUser
Room Mailbox	00000000 00000000 00000000 00000111	7	ConferenceRoomMailbox
Equipment Mailbox	00000000 00000000 00000000 00001000	8	EquipmentMailbox
Mail User, Mail Contact	00000000 00000000 00000000 00000110	6
Public Folder	00000000 00000000 00000000 00000010	2	RemoteMailUser
N/A (this represents a special “Organization” object to Outlook, but does not map to a specific exchange object type)	00000000 00000000 00000000 00000100	4	Organization
N/A (this represents a special “Private Distribution List” object to Outlook, but does not map to a specific exchange object type)	00000000 00000000 00000000 00000101	5	PrivateDistributionList

This second table is perhaps of more interest.  In most situations, you will see objects appear as they should.  For example, a new mailbox (for an existing user or a new user) should always show up as a User Mailbox.  If your Exchange 2007 server co-exists with Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2000 servers, then all mailboxes on those 2000 or 2003 servers will show up as Legacy mailboxes.  You may, however, find under certain circumstances that it does not appear correctly.  For instance, after moving a mailbox from an Exchange 2003 server, which appears as Legacy Mailbox, to your Exchange 2007 server, it may now appear as a Linked Mailbox.  If this happens, you need to investiage why.  One possible cause could be if Associated External Account was set on the 2003 mailbox.

Also note that this attribute will not always be stamped with a value.  For example, Groups do not appear to have this attribute set with a value.  This leads me to conclude that Exchange is able to read this information from other attribute values as well (such as perhaps the GroupType attribute).

Although you should not be changing these values in a production environment, it is always fun to play around in a lab and learn more about what they do.  But make sure you do your playing in a lab environment!

Object Type	RecipientTypeDetails (Decimal Value)	Value Name
User Mailbox	1	UserMailbox
Linked Mailbox	2	LinkedMailbox
Shared Mailbox	4	SharedMailbox
Legacy Mailbox	8	LegacyMailbox
Room Mailbox	16	RoomMailbox
Equipment Mailbox	32	EquipmentMailbox
Mail Contact	64	MailContact
Mail-enabled User	128	MailUser
Mail-enabled Universal Distribution Group	256	MailUniversalDistributionGroup
Mail-enabled non-Universal Distribution Group	512	MailNonUniversalGroup
Mail-enabled Universal Security Group	1024	MailUniversalSecurityGroup
Dynamic Distribution Group	2048	DynamicDistributionGroup
Mail-enabled Public Folder	4096	PublicFolder
System Attendant Mailbox	8192	SystemAttendantMailbox
Mailbox Database Mailbox	16384	SystemMailbox
Across-Forest Mail Contact	32768	MailForestContact
User	65536	User
Contact	131072	Contact
Universal Distribution Group	262144	UniversalDistributionGroup
Universal Security Group	524288	UniversalSecurityGroup
Non-Universal Group	1048576	NonUniversalGroup
Disabled User	2097152	DisabledUser
Microsoft Exchange	4194304	MicrosoftExchange

[Update]
Although I couldn't find it previously, some of this information is documented in the Technet Exchange 2007 documentation.  If you happen to be experiencing an issue where a mailbox is showing up with the wrong Recipient Display Type, please reference the following links for details on how to correct that.  Also note that in most cases, there is a reason for a mailbox showing up the way it is.  For example, if you perform a cross-org mailbox move without first migrating the user account, it will show up as a Linked mailbox, and that is normal.  What you don't want to do is simply modify this value without addressing the other reasons for the current value being stamped.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201749.aspx - How to Convert a mailbox
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201694.aspx - How to Convert a mailbox to a Linked mailbox

[thanks to the comment of a visitor, it looks like I was off in my decimal conversions. I've edited the top table accordingly]

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  PingBack from http://www.server-talk.eu/2008/05/28/how-to-mailbox-zu-einer-linked-mailbox-konvertieren/

• Anonymous
  April 10, 2013
  To add to this - anyone searching for these values for Remote Mailbox users! RecipientDisplayType: -2147483642 RecipientTypeDetails: 2147483648

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2013
  This is incredibly helpful, Ben. Thank you for doing the research and posting this.

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2013
  Hi Ben, Thanks for this awesome list. I could not seem to find this list anywhere else online. It seems that you need to add new values to your tables for Exchange 2013. Here are the ones that I could find: For [msExchRecipientDisplayType]: MicrosoftExchangeMailbox - decimal 10 ExchangeOnlineApplicationAccount - decimal 12 For [msExchRecipientTypeDetails]: (Now represented as a "Large Integer/Interval" {64-Bit UINT} MicrosoftExchangeMailbox -- 8388608 --(2^23) ExchangeOnlineApplicationAccount -- 33554432 --(2^25) ExchangeDiscoverySearchMailbox -- 536870912 --(2^29) ExchangeOrganizationManagement -- 1073741824 --(2^30) ExchangeHealthMailbox -- 549755813888 --(2^39) Hope this helps!