Issue Converting .Net Messenger Accounts for LCS

When implementing LCS 2005 with public IM connectivity, all users who have IM accounts using your corporate domain (e.g. will @corpdomain.com) have to convert their accounts to a Microsoft domain (hotmail.com, messengeruser.com) in order to maintain their contact list when using MSN Messenger. We have ran into issues with this conversion process, escalating to MS, and have a solution, albeit not a good one.

This article provides a straightforward description of why you have to convert and includes a link to quickly convert. You get to choose a new IM account name and MS converts the account in about an hour the article states. Essentially, once the conversion takes place and your contacts login again, their contact for you is converted to the new account. There is no disruption. We have found that sometimes when the person converts and then logs in with the new user account, even a day later, all of their contacts appear offline. Reboots and attempting to login with the corpdomain.com account do not work.

MSN support recommends:

1. Log in to MSN messenger with new account name.
2. Export your contacts to a file (Option in Menus)
3. Delete all your contacts manually
4. Import the contacts file.

We have found this works fine but is not a satisfactory solution if you are converting dozens of accounts and this happens frequently, especially for less technical savvy users. A MS MVP noted that the conversion may take a couple days if ever. It may be quicker just to walk the person through the above steps.