Exchange Server 2003 help!

[timberwolfdp]

I recently set up Exchange Server 2003 for one of my users. They share a mailbox so they can share contacts, calendar and email inbox. For demonstration purposes on this post I'll call their domain abc.local. They have a satellite provider for their internet access, and they use pop mail to send and receive email using the satellite provider's email server. I'll call that email address xyz@direcway.com. Pop mail is the default email service on both PCs. xyz@direcway.com is set up as the reply address on both machines.

For the most part they can send and receive email and the recipients get the email from xyz@direcway.com. Occasionally the recipients will get an email from name@abc.local, not from xyz@direcway.com. On other occasions they'll recieve a return email from the System Administrator stating that their messages were undeliverable.

Is there any way that I can turn off the email function in exchange server so I don't have to worry about them sending from the wrong account? Or, do I have something set up incorrectly? I'm pretty sure I didn't enable any email settings on the server, but I'm very new to Exchange server, so I might have done something to cause it to behave like it is.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Dave

[andrewpayne]

This is a simple solution.

Fire up Exchange System Manager

Expand Recipients and click on Recipient Policies. Double click Default Policy and the select Email Addresses (Policy)

Be sure to set your EXTERNAL email address (*direcway.com) as the default (it will then turn bold) or indeed add this if not mentioned.

This will then ask if you want to update all existing users and any new users will also pick up this setting. It will take 15 minutes to update the policy (depending on how many Active Directory Domain Controllers you have)

This should also remove the undeliverables as the Exchange will know that direcway.com is a locally managed domain.

Advanced Tip - on the properties of the SMTP Virtual Server - you may want to add direcway.com as the masquerading domain. But make sure that the FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) is set to SERVER.ABC.LOCAL (ie your local server name followed by your local domain name) - DNS has to be running correctly.

MS also recommend running WINS for Exchange Server 2003 to function 100%.

[andrewpayne]

I have found this link to the Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool.

This tool is designed for administrators who want to determine the overall health of their Exchange servers and topology. The tool scans Exchange servers and identifies items that do not conform to Microsoft best practices.

I have installed this on one of my domain workstations and run quite safely - the report produced is very useful for helping troubleshoot any exchange issues you may have.

BTW - don't forget to install SP1!

[timberwolfdp]

Thanks for the info, I'll try that when I get up there tonight.

Basically, I'm only using exchange to share their contacts and calendar and their inbox. All email transactions are done on the clients via POP, the inbox is just used to store and share the email they receive. Hopefully this will fix it.

Dave

[andrewpayne]

Exchange stores users email addresses in Active Directory - the System Manager enables you to ensure that the correct addresses are assigned to your users (especially setting the Reply To address correctly!)

You could also consider having a POP connector (such as the excellent mailEssentials for SMTP) to download a single pop account (ie all@domain.com) and then distribute the emails via Exchange's own mailbox system. This would then allow you to activate the excellent Outlook Web Access and also enable mail store backups rather than relying on maintaining several pst files dotted on users local hard drives.

There are many ways and all of them work - I just prefer the simplest!

[timberwolfdp]

I thought about that, but I think I'm going to go with just using the POP accounts on each client. There are only two users, it's a fairly simple setup. If I can just get this email issue worked out they'll be very happy.