Exchange Emails getting appended with Hexstring values

Question

Hi everyone!

In my org we currently are running OnPremis Exchange Office 365. As I view some of the useraccounts located within Exchange Admin Center it appears some of the emails being generated per our policy are reraly but sometimes getting Hexvalues append to the users name.

For example if we have

FLAST

The next accounts should be FLAST1, FLAST2, FLAST3 etc etc. but once in a while it seems sometimes they get

FLAST1e029f <---- Anyone seen this occur before? Is this because something is funky with my Email SMTP naming policy?

Thank you for any help!

Answer 1

By "OnPremis Exchange Office 365", do you mean you are running Exchange Online (Microsoft 365), or you are in a hybrid setup with both On premise Exchange like Exchange 2016 and Exchange Online configured?

but once in a while it seems sometimes they get FLAST1e029f

By this, do you mean the email address generated by the policy should be similar to FLAST1@Company portal .com, but you get FLAST1e029f@Company portal .com instead? If possible, could you please remove the personal information like domain name and username then share a screenshot of the issue so that we can understand better about the situation?

It's also suggested to run the command below to check the email address policy settings, please do remember to scrub the privacy info like domain name to protect your personal data:

    Get-EmailAddressPolicy <policyname> | Format-List Name,Enabled*  

Answer 2

Yes sir! I appreciate the response, Ill gather that information asap and post back here! Thank you!

Answer 3

Here you go, I hope this information is clear :) I appreciate the help!

[PS] C:\Windows\system32> Get-EmailAddressPolicy | Format-List Name,Enabled*

Name : Default Policy
EnabledPrimarySMTPAddressTemplate : @MyDomain.org
EnabledEmailAddressTemplates : {X400:c=US;a= ;p=MyCompany;o=MyOrg;, SMTP:@MyDomain.org, MS:MYD/EXCHANGE}

Name : MYD_2010_AddressPolicy
EnabledPrimarySMTPAddressTemplate : %@MyDomain.org
EnabledEmailAddressTemplates : {smtp:%@MyDomain.org, SMTP:%******@MyDomain.org}

Name : MyOtherDomain_AddressPolicy_Information Tech
EnabledPrimarySMTPAddressTemplate : %@MyOtherDomain.org
EnabledEmailAddressTemplates : {SMTP:%@MyOtherDomain.org, smtp:%@MyDomain.org, smtp:%@MyDomain.org,
smtp:%******@MyOtherDomain.org}

Name : MyOtherDomain_AddressPolicy_Telecommunications
EnabledPrimarySMTPAddressTemplate : %@MyOtherDomain.org
EnabledEmailAddressTemplates : {smtp:%@MyDomain.org, smtp:%@MyDomain.org, smtp:%@MyOtherDomain.org,
SMTP:%******@MyOtherDomain.org}

Name : MyOtherDomain_AddressPolicy_Organization-Wide
EnabledPrimarySMTPAddressTemplate : %@MyOtherDomain.org
EnabledEmailAddressTemplates : {SMTP:%@MyOtherDomain.org, smtp:%@MyDomain.org,
smtp:%@MyOtherDomain.org, smtp:%******@MyDomain.org}

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>

Answer 4

Thanks @Mr. Hall for sharing more details. From the first screenshot you shared, it seems that "hexstring values" only appear when there are more 10 same usernames that are auto generated by the address policy. I tried to test in my lab using a similar address format(%1g%s@Company portal .com) and got the result below:

It seems to me that the "hexstring values" are actually some random numeric or alphabetic characters in order for differetiating the same usernames generated by the policy. So I am assuming that this could be an expected behavior.

Given this, I'd like to suggest adjusting the variables used for the email address template to avoid more than 10 same usernames are generated by the format. For example, you can use %2g%s@Company portal .com to include the first two letters of the first name:

For more information about the variables that can be used in address format, hopefully you can find this link helpful: Address formats.