Microsoft 365 email address contains an underscore character after directory synchronization
Symptoms
After the Microsoft Entra Connect Tool runs to sync your on-premises Active Directory environment to Microsoft Entra ID, a user's Microsoft 365 email address unexpectedly contains an underscore (_) character.
Cause
This occurs if the user account in your on-premises environment has a proxyaddresses attribute or mail attribute that contains one or more of the following special characters before the "@domain.com" part of the address:
| Character | Name |
|---|---|
| space character | |
| ` | accent grave |
| ( | opening parenthesis |
| ) | closing parenthesis |
| | | pipe |
| = | equal sign |
| ? | question mark |
| / | forward slash |
| % | percent |
In this scenario, after directory synchronization is run, the special character is replaced by an underscore character. Therefore, the user's Microsoft 365 email address contains an underscore character instead of the special character.
Resolution
Remove the special characters from the proxyaddresses attribute of the user account in the on-premises environment.
More information
The characters that are listed in the Cause section are treated as special characters in Microsoft 365. Use of any of these characters may cause issues such as service disruption.
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