Offline Address Book Technical OverviewThis topic provides a brief technical overview of offline address books. It discusses how offline address books are generated, and where offline address book objects are stored in the Active Directory® directory service. Offline Address Book GenerationMicrosoft® Office Outlook® 2003 uses the offline address book to provide offline access to directory information from the global address list (GAL) and from other address lists. Each night, Exchange generates new offline address book files and places them in a special public folder, known as a system folder, for Outlook to download. The offline address book files are compressed before they are added to the offline address book system folders so that the download to Outlook is minimal. Outlook is scheduled to check periodically for new offline address book files in these system folders, and download the required files. Outlook 2003 has many new features and enhancements that are related to the offline address book. By using the offline address book, Outlook does not need to connect to Active Directory for common operations such as resolving recipient names, browsing the address list, or retrieving address details. The available functions are limited, but they are similar to the GAL (and other address lists) when working on the network. Several Exchange Server components work with Active Directory to generate and maintain offline address books. After an offline address book has been created (either automatically by Exchange Setup or manually by an administrator using Exchange System Manager), Exchange Server and Active Directory work together to maintain the offline address book, keeping it synchronized with changes that may be made in the directory. System folders can be displayed in Exchange System Manager, enabling an administrator to view the files that make up the offline address book. The following figures shows the Offline Address Book system folders in Exchange System Manager. For detailed steps, see How to View the Offline Address Book System Folders in Exchange System Manager. Each of the Exchange Server and Active Directory components involved in generating and maintaining offline address books is described as follows:
Active Directory AttributesA properly configured Active Directory is a necessary component for offline address book generation to work correctly with Exchange Server 2003. In addition to address lists, and the objects that make up those lists, the offline address book has its own directory attributes. Issues with Active Directory could result in issues with the offline address book. For example, interruptions in or a failure of Active Directory replication could prevent newly added directory objects from appearing in the offline address book. Offline address book information is stored in two places. The offline address book content is stored in the NON IPM SUBTREE of the public folder hierarchy, and offline address book objects are stored in the Configuration Naming Context in Active Directory (under CN=Offline Address Lists,CN=Address Lists Container,CN=<OrganizationName>,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=<DomainName>,DC=<DomainNameExtension>). Like all directory objects, offline address books have several attributes that control behavior and other elements. |