cannot receive some emails

[t27]

Business using Outlook 2003. Cannot receive some emails from various clients.
But able to receive email from them if they reply to an email. Tested by
using personal email to send to business email server. Results vary -
sometimes will appear and others will not. Checked junk e-mail folders - no
messages. Also tried resetting/restarting server - same problem. Any ideas?

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Business using Outlook 2003. Cannot receive some emails from various

clients. But able to receive email from them if they reply to an
email. Tested by using personal email to send to business email
server. Results vary - sometimes will appear and others will not.
Checked junk e-mail folders - no messages. Also tried
resetting/restarting server - same problem. Any ideas?

What kind of server? Are the users external to the server or internal?

 

[t27]

The server is actually just a regular desktop running Windows Server 2003.
all users are internal to server, but have full external broadband access to
the internet. Also, fyi virus scan did not pick up anything either.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Business using Outlook 2003. Cannot receive some emails from various
clients. But able to receive email from them if they reply to an
email. Tested by using personal email to send to business email
server. Results vary - sometimes will appear and others will not.
Checked junk e-mail folders - no messages. Also tried
resetting/restarting server - same problem. Any ideas?

One explanation is that they have stored an invalid address for you. They
can reply because you supply the valid address, but when they create a new
message, they're getting your address from their address book and that
address is incorrect.

There are other explanations as well.

 

[t27]

That possibly could be true in a few cases. However, during out test run
using a personal external email account to send to the business email, it
would fail to show up in outlook one time but then on a later attempt would
show up just fine. It seems to be oddly random.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Business using Outlook 2003. Cannot receive some emails from various

The server is actually just a regular desktop running Windows Server
2003. all users are internal to server, but have full external
broadband access to the internet. Also, fyi virus scan did not pick up
anything either.

So what type of mail server is it? Do you host your own email server?

I wouldn't think it's a virus, I'd more expect people aren't addressing mails
right.

 

[Brian Tillman]

That possibly could be true in a few cases. However, during out test
run using a personal external email account to send to the business
email, it would fail to show up in outlook one time but then on a
later attempt would show up just fine. It seems to be oddly random.

I recommend, then, that you enlist the aid of your sender, their ISP, and
your ISP to trace messages through the system so that you can discover where
the failure occurs.

 

[t27]

Yes, we do host our own email server. In a few cases, it may be the sender
not addressing correctly. However, we have tested it out by sending an email
from various personal external email accounts. The odd thing is that one time
it will not show up; and if we try again a little later, it shows up just
fine.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Business using Outlook 2003. Cannot receive some emails from

Yes, we do host our own email server. In a few cases, it may be the
sender not addressing correctly. However, we have tested it out by
sending an email from various personal external email accounts. The
odd thing is that one time it will not show up; and if we try again a
little later, it shows up just fine.

If you can reproduce it on the server itself, then trace it. Look at the
SMTP logs for the sender and see what the server software is doing when it
gets the message.

What happens when people try to send the messages? Are they getting failed
delivery status notifications?

Basically, I'm trying to see how you can call this an Outlook problem. If
you connect to the server with a different client, do you see the message?