in message
I have two return receipts that are trying to be sent back to the
original
email address but they can not be sent as I receive only email from
the
address and do not send emails from the server.
You are receiving e-mail that includes one of the following headers:
Read-Receipt-To
Address to which notifications are to be sent and a request to get
delivery
notifications.
(non-standard, discouraged)
Return-Receipt-To
Address to which notifications are to be sent and a request to get
delivery
notifications.
(non-standard, discouraged)
Generate-Delivery-Report
(I thought it was Delivery-Receipt-To)
Whether a delivery report is wanted at successful delivery.
RFC 2156, appendix C
Disposition-Notification-To
Requests for notification when the message is received, and specifies
the
address for them.
RFC 2298, section 2
For read receipts, Microsoft uses the correct header
Disposition-Notification-To. For delivery receipts, Microsoft is using
the non-standard and discouraged header Return-Receipt-To.
You aren't involved for delivery receipts as your mail server sends back
the delivery notice to the sender. When you get an e-mail with a read
receipt header, it generates a *new* e-mail to send back to the sender.
Most users don't bother with read receipts because they aren't
interested in acknowledging to spammers that they targeted a valid
e-mail address. They may be used within a company but just because an
employee opened an e-mail doesn't mean they actually read it. A user
may set read receipt handling to always prompt so they can decide
whether or not to send one or to always disable it so read receipts are
never sent back and the user isn't bothered with the prompts for them.
Setting read receipt handling to automatic is stupid.
They are not showing up in
my outbox so I can delete them and have no idea where they are located
to
delete them to stop the task.
Outlook will hide e-mails in its Outbox that are the read receipt
messages. Yeah, stupid, but that's how Microsoft tries to make it
invisible to the user that they are sending e-mails (read receipts) and
yet the [smart] user already got bothered with the prompt as to whether
or not to send it at all. Because Microsoft hides those outbound
e-mails from the UI, the user cannot delete them. Yet Outlook is known
for poor handling of hidden e-mails; i.e., read receipt e-mails DO get
stuck in Outlook and is another reason for NEVER sending them.
You have outbound e-mails that are hidden in the UI (i.e., the read
receipts). Microsoft provides no tool for cleaning out the hidden
e-mails. You can use OutlookSpy to go digging into Outlook to delete
the hidden mails. It isn't free but does have a trial period. If you
use OutlookSpy, be sure to make a copy of your .pst file since you are
using a low-level editor to modify it. Here is an article on how to use
OutlookSpy to get rid of those hidden read receipt outbound mails:
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/delete_rr.htm
If you continue using read receipts, you'll probably get stuck again
with hidden mails in the Outbox that you cannot delete through
Microsoft's UI for Outlook. And if you used OutlookSpy but the problem
reappears after its trial expires and you don't want to buy it, another
choice is to abandon your current message store (.pst file) and create a
new one (by renaming the old one, start Outlook which bitches about not
finding it, and then let it make a new one).
Don't use (send) read receipts in Outlook. They're dangerous both in
Outlook getting stuck trying to send them and that they are rarely
needed, especially for non-business mail. For business use, I believe
Exchange will block read receipts from going outside the company so
employees aren't sending read receipts to customers who shouldn't know
whether or not their e-mails are being read and when or by spammers
trying to find valid e-mail addresses. Since you didn't mention using
Exchange as your mail server, the best setup for you is to disable all
handling of read receipts.
