Procedure to Create a Mailbox in Exchange 2016

In this article, I am going to discuss the procedure to create a mailbox in Exchange 2016 using PowerShell Commands and Exchange Admin Center (EAC).

As you might know that mailboxes needs to be created for every user in Exchange Server to enable them to send/receive messages and to store messages, tasks, appointments, notes etc. It is the common recipient type that is associated with an Active Directory user account in Exchange Server Environment. In this article, we will study the procedure to create a mailbox in Exchange 2016.

Preparations for Creating a Mailbox

• While creating a new user mailbox, the user needs to ensure that they do not use any unsupported characters such as apostrophes (‘), or quotation marks (“) in the username section. It may successfully create the mailbox but these characters will cause problems later.
• Users need to have full rights and permissions (Organization Management and/or Recipient Management) needed to manage recipients, in order to create a mailbox in Exchange Server.

How to Create a Mailbox in Exchange 2016

Creation of a mailbox can be done in two ways either by using Exchange Admin Center or by Exchange Management Shell. Mailboxes can be created for new users and for existing users who have an Active Directory user account but no longer have a corresponding mailbox. The latter case is known as mailbox-enabling existing users.
Let us learn the stepwise procedure to create a mailbox in Exchange 2016.

Using Exchange Admin Center to Make a Mailbox for New User

• Log on to Exchange Admin Center (EAC) and click on Recipients -> Mailboxes
• Under the Mailboxes Tab, click on New (+) and select User Mailbox
• In the new user mailbox page, enter the user’s alias in the Alias box. The user’s alias is the part of the email address that comes before @ symbol and should be unique from other user’s alias in the forest.
• Select any of the two options to create a mailbox namely New User and Existing User.
  1. New User:
     This option has to be selected for creating a new user account in the Active Directory and mailbox for this user. We will do the following:
     1. Choose the New User option and fill up the credentials such as first name, Initials, Last name, etc.
     2. Select the desired Organizational unit other than the default option.
     3. Type the user login name that will be used while signing in.
     4. To set the password, enter a password in the New Password Field
     5. Type the same password in the Confirm Password Field
     6. “Require password change on next logon” is the option that enables the user to change the password after the first login.

Building a New Mailbox for Pre Existing Users on EAC

For creating a mailbox for the existing user present in the Active Directory, we use the Existing User option. For this, we will perform these steps:

• 1. Select the Existing User option.
  2. User need not provide any information as it is already present in Active Directory
  3. Click on Browse to open the Select User-entire Forest and select the desired user account
  4. From the list of Active Directory user accounts, choose the desired user account that the user needs to mail-enable and click on OK.
• Click on More Options to perform more configurations:
  1. Users can specify the desired mailbox database if they do not want Exchange to select the database for them automatically using the Specify the mailbox database option. Select Browse to select any mailbox database from the lists of mailbox database in the Exchange organization and click on OK
  2. Select the option Create local archive storage to create an archive mailbox for the mailbox created. All the mailbox items will be moved automatically from the primary mailbox to the archive, based on the default retention policy settings or settings defined by the user. Select Browse to choose the database that resides in the local forest for storing archive mailbox and click on OK
  3. Specify an Address Book Policy (ABP) for the mailbox using the Address Book Policy option, which will consist of a Global Address List (GAL), an Offline Address Book (OAB), etc. Choose the desired policy that the user wants from the drop-down list.
• After entering all the information above, click on ‘Save’ to finish the creation of the mailbox in Exchange Server 2016.

Use an Exchange Management Shell Edition for Exchange 2016 and Create A New User Mailbox

Another method for creating a user mailbox is to use Exchange Management Shell using a command line approch:
“New-Mailbox -Alias Silviac -Name "Silvia Collins" -FirstName Silvia -LastName Collins -DisplayName "Silvia Collins" -UserPrincipalName silviac@contoso.com -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString -String ‘PasswordSil’-AsPlainText -Force)”
It contains the following information:
Alias – Silvia
First Name – Silvia
Last Name- Collins
Name and display name- Silvia Collins
User Logon Name- silviac@contoso.com
Password – PasswordSil
Note: Include OrganizationalUnit Parameter to specify the different OUs instead of using the default unit.

EMS Mailbox Creation in Exchange 2016 for Existing user

This method is strictly for the mailboxes of those users that already exist in the Exchange database.
Use the following command:
Enable-Mailbox john@contoso.com -Database UsersMailboxDatabase”
Where john@contoso.com is the user that already exists, for which we are creating a mailbox.
In the command, we have used the Enable-Mailbox command to mail-enable a single user.

Note  some users may complain that thier Activesync is not working in Exchange 2013 when a similar procedure was performed there. So be carefule while using the EMS.

However, you can use it for multiple users by piping the results of the Get-User command to the Enable-Mailbox command.
Note: In order to ensure that the user does not convert a system account to a mailbox, use the following command to filter out non mailbox-enable users value in the UserPrincipalName property.
Get-User -RecipientTypeDetails User -Filter { UserPrincipalName -ne $Null } | Enable

Way to Verify the Creation of a Mailbox

• Go to EAC, click on Recipients -> Mailboxes, and check the newly created user mailbox.
• Execute the following command to check the creation of a mailbox in the Exchange Management Shell:
  Get-Mailbox | FL Name,RecipientTypeDetails,PrimarySmtpAddress
  Note: The value for the RecipientTypeDetails property is UserMailbox

Conclusion

In the article, we have explained all the detailed steps used to create a mailbox in Exchange 2016, which can be possible either by using Exchange Management Shell or Exchange Admin Center. Users can refer to this article as a guide for the creation of a user account mailbox in the Exchange Server.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who can create mailboxes for users?
Users themselves have no ability to add remove or control the mailbox access in any way. Either the admin or people with Organization Management and/or Recipient Management permission can perform this task.

Is there a limit on mailbox creation?
The most critical limit is who can and cannot create the mailbox, other than that the mailbox size itself has no limit, as it is a factor of the database itself. Moreover, Microsoft places no restrictions on the number of mailboxes you create on a self-managed server.

According to some estimates, if you have a single mailbox on your database, then it can occupy the whole database i.e. swell up to 2 TB, with an extension to 16 TB. You can aslo use PowerShell script to find the largest mailbox in Exchange Server and deal with it manually.
Moreover, the maximum OST size for Outlook 2019 by default is 50GB, with a maximum capacity of 4 PB. However, such scenarios rarely ever occur in everyday organizations, so you need not be concerned about it.

Why do experts recommend using EMS over regular PowerShell for mailbox creation purposes?
This is not just the best practice for making new mailboxes but for all tasks related to the Exchange server. EMS auto-connects to the server and also contains all the modules you would require.

I want to add multiple mailboxes in my Exchange Server should i use the EAC or EMS?
When bulk user creation is not possible from the GUI module. So, for that, you must make additional preparations (like preparing a user CSV) and use the PowerShell module. Either the regular Windows PowerShell or the Exchange Management Shell will do the trick.