Exchange/Domain Question

petes

Strange request. I want to allow users access to the server but not allow access to their email. Reason being say if something wasn't done their email is disabled and not enabled until the task is finished. Server is Server 2003 with Exchange. Is there a simple way to do this. Not really up on exhcange.

seamus

I don't really follow.

What do you mean you want them to be able to access the server?

"Reason being say if something wasn't done their email is disabled and not enabled until the task is finished."
Can you elaborate on this?

petes

I know. I don't really follow it myself. It was something I was asked to look into(don't ask). Basically can I temporarily disable email for a particular user easy enough? Basically so they can't send/receive emails until its enabled again.

I suppose I could just put delivery restrictions on the account.

seamus

Yes, it's very simple in Exchange 2003 to disable a user's email. It depends on exactly what you mean by "disable" though, i.e. do you want all mail to them to be refused, or do you just want to make it impossible for them to access their mail?

There are multiple ways of doing it, and it's even scriptable if this is an ongoing or automatic thing you wish to set up.

petes

seamus wrote:

Yes, it's very simple in Exchange 2003 to disable a user's email. It depends on exactly what you mean by "disable" though, i.e. do you want all mail to them to be refused, or do you just want to make it impossible for them to access their mail?

There are multiple ways of doing it, and it's even scriptable if this is an ongoing or automatic thing you wish to set up.

Thanks Seamus. I want to make it impossible for them to access their mail and it will be ongoing.

seamus

Your best bet then is access rights. You should be able to set a deny permission on their account which will refuse access to the Exchange mailbox. I don't have an Exchange server to test this on right here, but the theory is sound. Deny permissions should override allow permissions on the mailbox, even for the owner.

petes

seamus wrote:

Your best bet then is access rights. You should be able to set a deny permission on their account which will refuse access to the Exchange mailbox. I don't have an Exchange server to test this on right here, but the theory is sound. Deny permissions should override allow permissions on the mailbox, even for the owner.

I get what you mean. I will have a go at that and see how I get on. Cheers again.

seamus

In order to set permission for Exchange users/mailboxes, you will either need to install the AD MMC from the Exchange server CD, or log into the Exchange server (e.g. through Remote desktop) and use the MMC installed on that machine. You can't set permissions on mailboxes through the standard Active Directory MMC and the permissions through Outlook aren't really ideal/sufficient.

Capt'n Midnight

are you looking to turn them all off and then on one by one ?

or do you want an automated on/off based on a task the complete on a regular basis ?

the NET USER command has lots of stuff you can do

http://www.petri.co.il/disable_the_guest_account_in_windows_xp.htm

In Windows XP Home you'll need to use the NET USER command from the command prompt because the Local Users and Groups is not easily available. To do so open a Command Prompt by running CMD.EXE.

Use the following syntax:

net user username /active:no

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/15083/15083.html

for /f "skip=2" %I in (users.txt) do net user %I /active:no /domain