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Environment:

  • Exchange 2007
  • Avctive Directory 2008 R2
  • Outlook 2010

I'm having a problem with thumbnail photos in the GAL\OAB. I can add photos and they display fine when connected to Exchange (using Outlook Anywhere), but they do not display when disconnected. With Exchange 2010, this can be corrected via

Set-OfflineAddressBook "Default Offline Address Book" -ConfiguredAttributes

...but this command doesn't appear to work in Exchange 2007. Can anyone offer any guidance on changing this attribute from and Indicator to a Value?

Also, photos are also not automatically updated in a users contacts (assuming there's a match). I assume that other details are taken care of via global address list synchronization, but the photo isn't being updated because of the above problem. If I view a contact whose only change has been the photo and click "update", it responds with something to the effect of "no changes". However, if I open the GAL entry, save, and merge, the photo is updated.

Any help is appreciated.

Tony
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1 Answers1

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To quote the Exchange Team Blog:

Q. Do I need Exchange 2010 to display GAL Photos?

A. As noted in the post, Active Directory has the thumbnailPhoto attribute. Outlook 2010 has the client-side feature to display the photo. Exchange 2010 provides the Import-RecipientDataProperty cmdlet to easily import the photo (yes, a GUI would've been nice - we hear ya!), and Exchange 2010's Offline Address Book (OAB) has the ability to include the necessary pointers to Active Directory to allow Outlook 2010 clients in Cached Exchange Mode to display the photo — the client still needs to be able to communicate with Active Directory to download the photo. You can make it work for Outlook 2010 clients without using Exchange 2010, but Cached Mode support is an Exchange 2010 + Outlook 2010 feature.

So no, you need Exchange Server 2010 for it to work offline

When you manually pull an update after only changing the photo (which is not in the GAL), the GAL is unchanged and the client doesn't perform the update.

I suspect that an image update is chained with the GAL update subroutine, eg. if the GAL didn't have a photo, contact AD directly

Mathias R. Jessen
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