KB196850 - Viewing hidden or deleted Exchange objects via ADSI/LDAP

Article ID: 196850

Article Last Modified on 3/1/2005

Microsoft Active Directory Service Interfaces 2.0
Microsoft Active Directory Service Interfaces 2.5
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q196850

SUMMARY

In order to view hidden and deleted objects in the Exchange directory, you must explicitly connect to the server as an Exchange admin account and specify an additional username component of "cn=admin".

MORE INFORMATION

You can bind explicitly as an admin by using a Bind DN (ADSI username) of the following form:

   "cn=username,dc=domain,cn=admin"

The username and domain should be replaced with appropriate values, while the cn=admin portion is literal and should be used as is.

The following Microsoft Visual Basic code illustrates binding as an admin using ADSI LDAP:

   Set adsNS = GetObject("LDAP:")
   Set adsObj = adsNS.OpenDsObject(strObjName,"cn=" & strUser & ",dc=" & _

      strDomain & ",cn=admin" , strPassword, 0 )

NOTE: When you connect with "cn=admin", hidden and deleted objects appear mixed with normal objects. You must test for (or filter on) the Is-Deleted or Hide-From-Address-Book properties to distinguish them from normal objects.

REFERENCES

For more information about using ADSI, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and Exchange, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wss/wss/_mgmt_management_tasks_using_adsi.asp

For additional information about using LDAP to view hidden and deleted objects, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

185475 LDAP search returns no entries for hidden or deleted objects

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