urgent help needed - internal mail probs

[Ausadmin]

Hi All



I’ve got an email problem that’s making me crazy and seriously
en-dangering my job. My role’s primarily product support for our
software but I get to be sysadmin anytime anything’s broken
;-)



We’re all on outlook 2003 now. We pop our mail from head office and
also have a local exchange account for internal mail and product
testing. I’ve got the zeacom pop accounts set as the default send
account. When I try and send mail locally I get a bounce:


Your message

To: (e-mail address removed)

Subject: testing reply-to with internal mail

Sent: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:06:34 +1200

did not reach the following recipient(s):


(e-mail address removed) on Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:58:10 +1200

The destination server for this recipient could not be found in
Domain Name Service (DNS). Please verify the email address and retry.

If that fails, contact your administrator.

<gauntlet2.zeacom.net #5.4.0>



Now I have a contact with Gordon as the Zeacom and the local address
ie. (e-mail address removed) for external and (e-mail address removed)
for internal.

The primary smtp address is (e-mail address removed)

If you choose the account as exchange server from the drop-down it
goes.

But if you leave it with the default send of Zeacom.com it tries to
send it externally even though it cheerfully resolved the internal
address.

There are no apparent errors in the exchange server event logs. Help
would be much appreciated - we've got a new boss and my job could be on
the line over this amazingly enough.

Actually some more clarification

The branch office I am in has its own AD and exchange organisation

The domain is mel.aus.local

The exchange organisation is mel-aus

We have local user a/cs in the mel.aus.local domain eg.
(e-mail address removed) We also have head office accounts in their
zeacom domain which we use to get our mail eg.
(e-mail address removed)


RECIPIENT POLICIES

On exchange1.mel.aus.local we have one policy called Default Policy
details are:

(mailnickname=*)

Email Addresses (policy)
smtp @mel.aus.local

 

[Jeff Stephenson [MSFT]]

Outlook 2003 (unlike previous Outlook versions) will look within a
recipient's address book entry to find an SMTP address when requested to
send via SMTP, even if the "default" address type of the recipient is
Exchange. So when you send to an internal Exchange recipient with your ISP
account as the default account, Outlook will pull the default SMTP address
(the internal SMTP address) out of the address book and use it. Since your
Exchange server doesn't sit on the Internet, however, that is an
undeliverable address to your ISP. Unfortunately, you can't set your
Exchange account as default, because it will bounce any external recipients.

The only solution I can come up swith (and I'm not an Exchange expert - you
may want to post to the Exchange newsgroups) would be to remove the internal
SMTP proxy addresses from the address book entries of your users, leaving
just their external SMTP addresses. That way Outlook will pick the external
SMTP address, and mail to them will be deliverable. Unfortunately, it will
go through your ISP's server rather than being delivered internally, but it
*will* at least be deliverable.

In the past, we've simply encouraged people to put their Exchange server on
the Internet, in which case all these problems disappear. With the Internet
environment the way it is nowdays, though, it's understandable that a
smaller corporation without a dedicated IT staff would want to let an ISP
deal with issues of viruses, spam, and general security, and keep Exchange
off the Internet. Exchange and Outlook were not really designed with such
an setup in mind, however. I've started an internal discussion on how best
to address this issue, but for now I can only offer the above solution.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Outlook 2003 (unlike previous Outlook versions) will look within a
recipient's address book entry to find an SMTP address when requested
to send via SMTP, even if the "default" address type of the recipient
is Exchange.

How can Outlook examine the _recipient's_ address book? Oh. you're saying
the recipient's entry in the sender's address book.