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I am a rookie network admin running Server 2003 R2 with Exchange 2003. I am unable to receive external emails for new accounts created on my domain. Originally this problem was only occuring with one new user. Now I have found that any account I create has this issue. The last new account I created that worked was a month ago and I have not changed anything in the settings since then. I tried looking up the issue and I checked the relay settings on the server and everything seems to be fine. How do I solve this issue?

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  • This has Doofenshmirtz's name all over it. (Sorry, I don't have a real answer)
    – Alex
    May 26, 2011 at 2:10

3 Answers 3

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Thank you all for your help with this. This was a symptom of a bigger problem. No one was getting external mail. The new user was only one who told me. Turns out the SMTP soured (horrible permissions settings) and had blocked access from the mail filter to port 25. As a result the appliance was holding onto the mail and not releasing it to the Exchange server. Another IT had made some changes to the SMTP connector permission settings and the addition of a few other IPs I was not aware of us using for anything. I turned the SMTP service off, created a new SMTP connector and assigned only our Exchange IP to it and everything was restored.

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And all of the old accounts are still working? There are a few things you should check for mail delivery problems: Make sure that it is your server that is actually rejecting the mail and not some other server.

  • Make sure the domain's MX record (which tells the world how to send you mail) is pointing to your mail server.

    The MX record for bbbsnn.org -> mail.bbbsnn.org -> 216.210.164.170

  • mail.bbbsnn.org answers with this header

    220 mail.bbbsnn.org ESMTP SonicWALL (7.2.1.2841)

    which shows that exchange is not the mail server, a SonicWall spam filter appliance is.

Unfortunately, I am not very familiar with SonicWall appliances, but this should tell you where to start. Make sure that your SonicWall filter is not the problem.

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  • Actually the Exchange server is the email server, the SonicWall is a spam filter and/or SMTP proxy (in addition to being a firewall/router).
    – joeqwerty
    May 27, 2011 at 2:09
  • @joeqwerty, Yes, but it is the SonicWall which is rejecting the messages, not exchange. You need to find out why the SonicWall does not like the new addresses. It should have a log that you an view.
    – yakatz
    May 30, 2011 at 3:36
  • I just saw the answer at the top. "Turns out the SMTP soured (horrible permissions settings) and had blocked access from the mail filter to port 25." The SonicWall log would have told you that very quickly.
    – yakatz
    May 30, 2011 at 3:37
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These are external senders sending to internal recipients? If so, it sounds like Exchange is not authoratative for the recipient domain (and therefore sees the incoming email as an attempt to relay email to a domain that the server is not authoratative for). Have you checked your Recipient Policy to make sure that it's configured with the domain in question and that it's authoratative for said domain?

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