How to change passwords for Exchange users
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 by William Gannon (See all posts by William Gannon)
Someone may have just given you the task to change a password for an Exchange user, and now you’re here; I’m not talking about changing your password, I mean change another user’s password as an administrator. Maybe you’ve never done any administration with Exchange, and the task just kind of fell into your lap. You google’d “change password exchange user”, but you probably didn’t find anything obvious. You clicked around the Exchange Management console, and you didn’t see any options to change a password. Forget using the Exchange Management Shell! So how do you change the password for your Exchange user!?
Actually, you just need to know that Exchange uses the password information from AD(Active Directory) for its users. There isn’t a way to change the password from the Exchange Management Console or shell. You need to change the password from the Active Directory Users and Computers administration tool.
Log onto your AD server as an Administrator. Under Administrative Tools, select Active Directory Users and Computers. Inside of Active Directory Users and Computers, locate the user you want to change the password for. Right-click the user name and select Reset Password.
Note: Every organization’s AD structure is different. The user you are looking for may be embedded in one or more Organizational Units.
Click to Enlarge
The reset password dialog box will appear. Type in the new password of the user. You may notice there are a few other options here to have the user change his or her password on next login and to unlock the user account; these options would only be available if they were set in the user’s properties. Select OK when done.
The password has now been changed. If you want to have the user set his or her own password, right-click the user name and select Properties. Under the Account tab, there are several options. Selecting User must change password at next logon under Account Options forces the user to create a new password the next time he or she logs onto the domain or tries to connect to the Exchange server. Then, reset the password per the previous instructions.
Lol, seems so easy now that you’ve explained it. You’re right though if you google how to do this very little if anything useful come up this will continue to enrich knowledge of new users everywhere. Even me, though I have yet to have to do this, it will add another piece o useful knowledge into my mind.
Password maintenance can be quite a pain for larger companies. Even with platforms like Oracle, there are always different passwords to be forgotten. Have a simple, automated, way for employees to reset their passwords should be essential.
I love to google because there is so much information out there, but like you said, it isn’t always that helpful. I like this site because it takes us step by step and includes screen images. it really makes it easier.
Do I have to reset the server in order for this to take effect? I’m still having issues.
Thank you for this.