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Changing Active Directory and Exchange Username after Marriage/Mistake

If we have a User in our Domain who recently got married or  you ever fat fingered a user’s name but didn’t notice until the user tried to login with their actual name?
Well these are steps for you:


Changes in Active Directory:

  1. 1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers.
  2. 2. Navigate to the Employees Organizational Unit (OU).
  3. 3. Right-click on the Name of the Employee for the name change and select Rename.
  4. 4. Rename the Employee.
  5. 5. Rename User dialog box appears:
    •         a. Full Name should be correct.
    •         b. First Name should be correct.
    •         c. Last Name should be changed to the new Last Name.
    •         d. Display Name will changed in the above step.
    •         e. User Logon Name should be changed to the new Last Name.
    •         f. User Logon name (pre-Windows 2000) will be changed in the above step.

Changes in Exchange:

  1. 1. Open Exchange Management Console.
  2. 2. Under Recipient Configuration click on Mailbox to view all user mailboxes.
  3. 3. Right click the employee name and select Properties.
  4. 4. In the General Tab:
    •         a. Change the Alias to match username changed in Active Directory Users and computers.
    •         b. Click Apply button.
  5. 5. In the E-Mail Addresses Tab:
    •         a. SMTP Address with the new name should be bold.
    •         b. Highlight the old address, right click and select remove.
    •         c. Click Apply Button, then OK.
  6. 6. Update the Offline Address Book, navigate to Organization Configuration and select Mailbox.
  7. 7. Select the Offline Address Book Tab.
  8. 8. Right click on the Default Offline Address Book select Update.
  9. 9. Click Yes in the dialog box.

That should do it for both Active Directory and Exchange.

Reference/More Info: How to: Changing Active Directory and Exchange username after marriage or mistake

11 thoughts on “Changing Active Directory and Exchange Username after Marriage/Mistake”

  1. Does this affect login to their domain joined PC? Since it changes the user logon name, will that cause the user to lose access to their user profile on their PC, as windows will make a new one with the new name when the user next logs on?

    1. Hi Kyle,
      When you rename the user in Active Directory their SID does not change so when you logon to the computer with the new username, it associates with the SID of the previous user and everything the previous user had is now available to the new username exactly as it was before.
      Hope this answer your query. Thanks.

    1. Hi Kia, It all depends on how emails are set-up and where are they hosted, it can be just adding an alias for the new name and make them as primary address, so emails for both accounts gets delivered. Please let me know.

  2. I done this and everything is perfect except Skype. It seems their name on Skype for Business is still the old one and messages won’t deliver

  3. Hi Jatin,
    Read your explanation and was clear with the renaming conventions and its working principle in AD Users and Computers.However, i have a question can i rename the SID ID to the new User name so that everything will be changed.

    1. Hi Mahesh,

      Glad that the thread helped you, just quickly Do we know what are we trying to achieve so that it needs renaming of SID?

      Permissions and other uses of the account by Windows and Exchange shouldn’t be an issue, as they identify the account by its SID, not by its name.Thanks.

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