---
title: "Problem creating mail enabled Contact on Exchange 2003"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/11/5/problem-creating-mail-enabled-contact-on-exchange-2003.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/11/5/problem-creating-mail-enabled-contact-on-exchange-2003.html"
published: "2005-11-05T09:05:00"
updated: "2005-11-05T09:05:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I don't usually do this - use the blog as a public forum post, unless I've searched the answer in all the places I know. This one is a favor for a friend I can't seem to get done on my own.My friend is desperately…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Problem creating mail enabled Contact on Exchange 2003

By Roy Osherove November 5, 2005 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published November 5, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

I don't usually do this - use the blog as a public forum post, unless I've searched the answer in all the places I know. This one is a favor for a friend I can't seem to get done on my own.My friend is desperately trying to solve this problem:

They are trying to create a "Mail Enabled" Contact on an Exchange Server 2003 under Windows 2003 Server, using .NET 1.1.

they are using this article as a base for their work:

[http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/CDOExchangeCode.asp](http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/CDOExchangeCode.asp "http")

However, they keep getting a "Cast is not valid" exception when trying out this line:

cdoRecipient = (IMailRecipient) cdoPerson

(IMailRecipient)userObj.NativeObject

they get this:

com error -532459699 unspecified error

If Anyone has any idea why that's happening (the cast or the 2nd error) and how to do this without causing this error, feel free to post a comment here directing us to the right article/solution.

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Nov 14, 2005

    ### [Be an MS Paint MVP](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/11/14/be-an-ms-paint-mvp.html)

- Nov 10, 2005

    ### [The unbearable ease of domain names](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/11/10/the-unbearable-ease-of-domain-names.html)

- Nov 5, 2005

    ### [Google AdSense Referral Program Open to the public](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/11/5/google-adsense-referral-program-open-to-the-public.html)

- Oct 30, 2005

    ### [My blog is not worthless after all](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/30/my-blog-is-not-worthless-after-all.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/