Determining if an E-mail Address is an Alias or User in Exchange Server 2007

This article will go over how to determine if an e-mail address is an alias or main username in Exchange. This applies to Dedicated or Cloud Exchange servers only. You can find more information on these services at http://www.hosting.com/services/platform-services

1. Login to the Exchange server via remote desktop
2. Open up Exchange Management Shell
3. Type in the following command: 
   • Get-Mailbox -identity changeme@domain.com
   • Replace changeme@domain.com with the e-mail address you are trying to find out is an alias or main username
4. If it's an alias, it will give another result. Lets say we are investigating tech1@hosting.com. The results may look like this:
   
   


5. The fact that I get a result back, tells me that tech1@hosting.com exists. Because the result does not match, it is an alias. bob@hosting.com is the main username in this case. This is another example to verify this:
   
   


6. If the user doesn't exist, you will get no results back and you will get a Get-Mailbox error.