1) When "Edit User Profile" in Central Administration , a number of Out-of-the-box profile properties are marked with a blue asterix to indicate those properties have a "Policy setting" set to 'Required', meaning this property should contain a value.
It concerns the properties : Name , Work phone , Department , Title , Source Object Distinsuidhed Name , Office. ( Remark : all those properties are default imported from AD)
While 'Required' should enforce the property to contain a value, the property is found empty - as AD has that attribute blank! Also, editing a user profile in Central Admin accepts the property to be left empty. For testing the property "Office" was taken.
2) After changing the "Policy setting" of an non-imported property toggling it from"Optional" to "Required", editing a user profile DOES accept empty values for that property after doing a "Save and close". For testing the property "Office Location" was taken. In addition , this property - once changed to 'Required' - is not listed with the blue asterix.
Anyone who can demystify.
Thanks in advance
Kind regards