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We are using a hosted MS Exchange provider, and they claim that our account can only have one administrator. They also claim that they cannot change which login is granted administrator privileges. This means that the user account that was initially created five years ago is the only account that can change our billing information, among other things.

The employee associated with the current admin account is no longer with the company, so we'd like to move the admin privileges to a new "sysadmin" account, and delete this employee's account. Shouldn't this be really easy to do? Is my hosted exchange provider telling the truth?

RussSchick
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Exchange itself has no such limitation, you can have as many or as few users with full administrative privileges as you like. It even has multiple groups predefined which correspond to different levels of privilege.

As far as I understand (and admittedly, I have first-hand experience) "hosted" Exchange services, they are basically regular MS Exchange, except they are managed by a 3rd-party instead of in-house.

So either they are too lazy/incompetent to do this, or they have a software layer above Exchange which causes the limitation.

ThatGraemeGuy
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It is my belief that your provider is doing just as Graeme said, and there is a software layer above Exchange (your control panel, I assume) which doesn't provide you with the ability to change the main Administrator account.

I do hope that your provider's control panel admin is separate from the mailboxes themselves. You should be able to delete your ex-employee's mailbox without affecting the control panel, and vice versa.

With the service I provide, my customers have the ability to add multiple contacts to their accounts. They can choose from billing, technical, and contact admin roles. There is only one Account Owner account. HOWEVER, we do allow the customer to change all the Account Owner information to match a new admin's info. If you can't log into the control panel (maybe the ex-employee was the only one who knew the password), all we need is proof that you are the new administrator for your account, and we can reset the password and even make the Account Owner changes for you.

The point is, there are service providers out there who aren't lazy, and provide the kind of service that you want. It might be worth your time to make a list of the things you don't like and what you would want in a hosted Exchange solution, then ask several providers if they can provide those things.