Error when you manage a user in EAC: Can't find the organizational unit that you specified

• Applies to:

  Exchange Server

Original KB number:   3173169

Symptoms

If a user belongs to an OU whose name includes a forward slash, you can't manage that user by using the EAC. If you try to open the user's properties, you receive the following error message:

Can't find the organizational unit that you specified. Make sure that you have typed the OU's identity correctly.

Cause

When the property page is rendered, one of the cmdlets that runs in the background is Get-UserPrincipalNamesSuffix. The OU property that is passed to this cmdlet is formed when Get-Mailbox is run and is retrieved from the OU property of the user.

This problem occurs because the OU property of the user contains an incorrectly escaped forward slash. For example, if My OU/ is the name of the OU, My OU\/ would be the properly escaped version. Passing My OU\/ to Get-UserPrincipalNamesSuffix would let the cmdlet run correctly. However, My OU/ is instead passed to Get-UserPrincipalNamesSuffix. In this situation, the cmdlet fails and returns the error message that is mentioned in the Symptoms section.

Workarounds

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:

• Use the Exchange Management Shell to manage the affected user accounts.
• Avoid the use of OUs that contain forward slashes in their names when you store users and groups that will be used by Microsoft Exchange Server.