Exchange Administrator

Exchange Administrator is a useful visual tool for configuring MS Exchange server installations. It is usually installed on a Windows NT server computer where MS Exchange services run. Exchange Administrator may also be installed on a remote system (either Windows NT workstation or server). The possibility to administer MS Exchange site remotely from a workstation is quite useful. Installing Exchange Administrator on a workstation is similar to installing complete Exchange site (same CD-ROM is used). You just need to uncheck unwanted options (such as Exchange server).

Exchange Administrator has a few modes of operation. For all available modes of Exchange Administrator start it with this command:

admin.exe /?

This should present a dialog describing all options.

The two most important modes are regular and so-called "raw" mode. Raw mode allows you to access object properties, which are not displayed in normal mode. You can use the following command to start Exchange Administrator in raw mode:

admin.exe /r

Exchange Administrator in Raw Mode

In order to view raw properties of an object - select it and then choose "Raw Properties" item on the "File" menu. You can also look into Directory Schema in this mode. In order to do it - check "Raw Directory" item on the "View" menu. A folder called Schema should appear in the site sub-tree. This folder contains all objects listed in the Directory Schema.

Exchange Administrator may be configured to start automatically in raw mode through Windows NT Registry. Open the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
    Software
        Microsoft
            Exchange
                MSExchangeAdmin
                    Desktop

and introduce RawMode value of type REG_DWORD and assign 1 to it. (1 means start in raw mode, 0 - start in regular mode).

One very interesting feature of Exchange Administrator in raw mode is how it allows to trace parent-child relationships of objects. Do, for example, the following:

Obtain raw properties of any user.
Select its "Object-Class" attribute.
Observe a few attribute values listed in binary format.
If you double-click on a specific value, this will result in displaying attributes associated with this value. You may see that a user's mailbox is first of all, an object of type Mailbox, which inherits from Mail-Recipient, which in turn inherits from Top.