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How do I remove users from MailEssentials User List?

Author: Luis Fernandes Updated

Overview

This article describes the procedure to remove users from the MailEssentials user list in order to manage the number of users counting towards license utilization.

Solution

The steps are structured in the following subcategories:

Determine the MailEssentials User Mode

The procedure to remove users is dependent on the User Mode selected during product installation. User Mode determines how MailEssentials retrieves the list of users and cannot be changed post-installation.

You can confirm which MailEssentials User Mode was selected during installation by following these steps:

  1. Open the GFI MailEssentials Configuration UI
  2. Navigate to General Settings > Settings
  3. If the User Manager tab is available, then GFI MailEssentials is installed in SMTP mode; otherwise, it is installed in Active Directory or Remote Active Directory mode.
Note

GFI MailEssentials may indicate more users than the active mailboxes under your domain for the following reasons:

  1. If MailEssentials is installed on a machine in SMTP mode and the machine is open for SMTP relay, all relayed addresses will be added to the MailEssentials user list.
  2. Users who left the company have not been disabled or deleted from Active Directory. This applies to Active Directory or Remote Active Directory User Modes.
  3. When MailEssentials is installed in SMTP mode, all SMTP email addresses are counted. If the same user makes use of multiple SMTP email addresses to send outbound emails, this will be seen as multiple users by GFI MailEssentials.

MailEssentials in Active Directory or Remote Active Directory mode

When GFI MailEssentials is installed in Active Directory or Remote Active Directory mode, the user count is managed by either disabling or deleting users from Active Directory Users and Computers on the domain controller.

You can verify the change by checking the License key information data or alternatively by enabling tracing and checking the contents of the usercntad.log log file located in: 

<GFI MailEssentials installation path>\GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\DebugLogs\usercntad.log

MailEssentials installed on the Exchange Server

When GFI MailEssentials is installed on a Microsoft Exchange server, users are retrieved from the Exchange Information Store. During installation, the administrator can select to retrieve users from Active Directory, and all Active Directory users that have their mailbox on the Microsoft Exchange Information Store on the same machine will be counted and used for licensing purposes.

In this deployment scenario, the user list can be managed by removing unused or inactive Microsoft Exchange mailboxes.

You can verify the change by checking the License key information data or alternatively by enabling tracing and checking the contents of the usercntvsapi.txt log file located in: 

<GFI MailEssentials installation path>\GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\DebugLogs\usercntvsapi.txt

MailEssentials installed in SMTP mode

When GFI MailEssentials is installed in SMTP mode, users can be deleted as follows:

  1. Open the GFI MailEssentials Configuration UI
  2. Navigate to General Settings > Settings
  3. Open the User Manager tab

  4. Select and Remove users as required:

    mceclip0.png

You can verify the change by checking the License key information data or alternatively by enabling tracing and checking the contents of the usertimecnt.txt log file located in: 

<GFI MailEssentials installation path>\GFI\MailEssentials\Antispam\DebugLogs\usertimecnt.txt

Testing

You can verify the number of users currently counting towards the license utilization as follows:

  1. Open the GFI MailEssentials Configuration UI
  2. Navigate to General Settings > Licensing

  3. Scroll to the License key information table at the bottom of the page:

    License_key_information2.png
Note

After removing users from either Active Directory / Microsoft Exchange or the GFI MailEssentials User Manager tab, allow around an hour until the users are re-counted by GFI MailEssentials.

To get more information about how GFI MailEssentials retrieves and counts users, please review this relevant article: How does GFI MailEssentials retrieve and count users?

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