MailEssentials is reporting too many licensed users

Overview

When verifying the number of users currently counting towards the license utilization shows that the number has been exceeded. Checking both Active Directory and the Exchange Control Panel shows a number of Health Mailboxes, and that the number of legitimate users should not exceed the license.

Solution

MailEssentials counts users differently based on your environment. More details are available in the "How does MailEssentials Retrieve and Count Users?" article.

If MailEssentials is configured to use AD mode, the first step to solve this issue is to restart the GFI MailEssentials Services:

1. Open the Windows Services Manager:
   • From the Start menu, click Run.
   • In the Open box, type services.msc, and click OK.
2. Restart the following services:
   • GFI List Server
   • GFI MailEssentials Attendant
   • GFI MailEssentials AS Scan Engine
   • GFI MailEssentials Autoupdater
   • GFI MailEssentials AV Scan Engine
   • GFI MailEssentials Backend
   • GFI MailEssentials Legacy Attendant
   • GFI POP2Exchange
   • GFI MailEssentials Quarantine Action Services

If the previous step did not help, count the number of mailboxes by running the following search query in the Active Directory Users and Computers:

“(&(objectClass=person)(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))(mail=*)(samAccountName=*))"

If the number is still larger than the one provided by your license and all the accounts are in use, you may need to increase the number of seats for your license.

Testing

Applying the previous steps should report the correct number of users.

If the issue still persists, please generate the troubleshooting logs as follows:

• Make sure that you have tracing enabled.
• Wait for at least 30 minutes to gather enough information and for the issue to be reproduced.
• Run the troubleshooter:
  1. Start > Programs > GFI MailEssentials > Troubleshooter
  2. Follow the Log Generation Wizard for collecting the required and pertinent information.
  3. Select New Case when completing the log generation to attach the logs to a new case that will be automatically created, or open a support ticket manually and attach the logs to that ticket, so that the Support team can investigate the problem.