Finding an email address in Active Directory

Quick one today - how to find an assigned email address in Active Directory. You know what it's like, you try to give somebody an email address and you find it's already assigned, or somebody has sent an email to 'PostMaster@yourdomain.com' and you don't actually know who has received it etc. 

Some quick ways to find it:

1. Use outlook!

From Outlook 2003/7, enter the address in the 'To' field (such as EmailAddress@yourdomain.com) and hit ctrl-K to resolve the names. If it's assigned, it should replace the address with the 'nice' name.

2. Build an LDAP query.

No, really, it's pretty easy, honest :-)

Fire up Active Directory User & Computers (Start/Run - dsa.msc).

Right-click 'Saved Queries' at the top, and select 'New Query'.

Give it a name - 'Email address search' or the like.

Give it a description - 'Erm...Dave.'

Click the 'Define Query' button

Click the 'Find' drop down and change to 'Custom Search'

Click the 'advanced' tab and enter the following ldap query:

(proxyAddresses=smtp:Target@yourdomain.com)

Click 'OK' all objects that have that email address (should be 1 hopefully) are now displayed in the right-hand pane.

You could of course just send them an email with a read-receipt on too and hope they read it!!!