Outlook 2003 GAL Displays EX type / Creating Detail Templates

The issue has been raised on occasion of Outlook 2003 not providing a good way to retrieve a user’s email address in the GAL. The ‘Email Address’ field in the GAL is of EX type, and displays as the LegacyExchangeDN, and there is no ability to copy the email address from the contact properties.

When looking in Outlook 2003’s GAL, you probably see something like this:

In Outlook 2007 you see the following:

The reason for this is that Outlook 2003 uses the EX type for the Email Address column and Outlook 2007 uses the SMTP type. The EX type is an internal type that exchange uses, and returns a value equal to the LegacyExchangeDN. Unfortunately, Microsoft has hardcoded the GAL view from being modified. A great way to work around this is to use the Details Template Editor under the Exchange 2007 Toolbox (or in Exchange 2003’s ESM, under Recipients), and create a field for email address in the property template. Performing this action is actually good to do anyways for both 2003 AND 2007 clients given the fact that it displays the user or contact’s email address in a field that can be copied if needed.

Exchange 2003 – ESM

Exchange 2007 – EMC

The following example will detail specifically for Exchange 2007, though it can be more or less applied to 2003 with modifications.

Choose the General tab, and either highlight a field to change, or drag out a new one. I chose to change the Alias field to Email Address in this example as it was the least needed field given the circumstances, and it would cut down on clutter. You can change which ever field you want, or create a new one by dragging boxes from the left hand column. To do this, we select Alias, and change the label field on the right to &Email Address. We then click the text field, and select Email Address from the drop down menu.

We now have a field in the properties of users for the SMTP Email Address to be displayed in a copy friendly fashion! This procedure can be repeated for contacts, etc.