The default configuration for Exchange 2010 has the Address Book will update every 24 hours at 5am.
During this process all new email addresses are added to the Global Address List ready for when the clients next connect and refresh their copy of the address book.
This delay between an email account being create and being listed can cause organisational issue, like a users being unable to find the email address for a new staff member.
To resolve this you have two option, manually update the Address Book or customize the update schedule.
How to manually update the Global Address List
- In the Exchange Management Console, expand the ‘Organization Configuration’ node, and then select the ‘Mailbox’ node
- Open the ‘Offline Address Book’ tab, this will list all available Address Books for your organisation
- Right click on the appropriate address book and select ‘Update’
- When prompted, click ‘Yes’
How to customize the automatic update schedule for the Global Address List
Please note, depending on the size of your Exchange environment it may degrade the servers performance if updating too regularly or during core business hours/peak times.
- In the Exchange Management Console, expand the ‘Organization Configuration’ node, and then select the ‘Mailbox’ node
- Open the ‘Offline Address Book’ tab, this will list all available Address Books for your organisation
- Right click on the appropriate address book and select ‘Properties’
- Click on the ‘Customize’ button
- Customise as required and click ‘OK’ then ‘OK’ to save the changes
