Adding Exchange Administrators fails with error 00000525

March 6, 2009 · Filed Under Active Directory, Exchange Server 2007 | 762 views

Just as a quick reminder (because, oh…I forgot myself), if you have Exchange Server 2007 installed in a child domain in a parent/child domain forest then your Exchange security groups are going to be located in the parent (root) domain. So, if you want to add new Exchange Administrators using the Add Exchange Administrators wizard from the EMC or the Add-ExchangeAdministrator cmdlet in the EMS, you need to be an Enterprise Administrator if you’re trying to perform the add from the child domain. If not, you’ll get this error:

Summary: 1 item(s). 0 succeeded, 1 failed.
Elapsed time: 00:00:00

Add-ExchangeAdministrator
Failed

Error:
Active Directory operation failed on dc21.root.local. This error is not retriable. Additional information: The specified user does not exist.
Active directory response: 00000525: NameErr: DSID-031A0F80, problem 2001 (NO_OBJECT), data 0, best match of:
”

The object does not exist.

Exchange Management Shell command attempted:
Add-ExchangeAdministrator -Identity ‘company.local/SystemUsers/Service Accounts/ServiceAccount42′ -Role ‘ServerAdmin’ -Scope ‘XHT10A’

Elapsed Time: 00:00:00

Here’s one newsgroup post with this error, I’m sure there are others as well.