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I've created a service account mailbox in exchange 2010 that I need to use for a custom application. However, I don't want it to receive any emails. If I restrict the "Mailbox Settings => Storage Quotas => Prohibit send and receive at" to a small number as a workaround, will an "Undeliverable" message be sent to any user emailing to the global address list once the mailbox reaches its limit?

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I'm not sure what you mean by "the Global Distribution list", do you have a list which includes the entire organization? If so, why not simply remove this mailbox from the DL? – Coding Gorilla Sep 23 '11 at 15:03
I mean when you go into outlook and send an email to "Global" – skeletank Sep 23 '11 at 15:13
Unless this is something I'm unaware of (and I just check two separate Exchange 2010 orgs) there is no built-in "Global" list, so this is probably a list someone has created. In which case you should be able to just exclude this mailbox. – Coding Gorilla Sep 23 '11 at 15:15
Sorry, I'm not familiar with exchange management and I figured that it was something built-in since there was a distribution list with the same name at my old employer. My IT manager was worrying about it taking up space from receiving Global emails. I don't know what else he could have meant by that. – skeletank Sep 23 '11 at 15:24

4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

To answer your question directly, yes people (inside the organization) should get an undeliverable message if the message is rejected because of quota limits.

However, I would take a different approach. In Exchange 2010, your Exchange administrator can go into the EMC and create a transport rule which applies specifically to this mailbox with the actions of "send rejection message to sender with enhanced status code", or "Delete the message without notifying anyone".

This is something that, in the future, will be a lot easier for people to understand (assuming you and/or the exchange admin ever leave).

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+1 for the Transport Rules. I wasn't even aware of these, but they offer some good options not just for this post. – August Sep 23 '11 at 15:33
When I tried to create that rule this is what I got: Error: An action to reject the message was specified, but there is more than one action. When this action is used, it must be the only action in the rule. – skeletank Sep 23 '11 at 15:44
Sorry, I used "and" between the two actions where I should have used "or". If the message is rejected, obviously there's no need to delete it. =) (Corrected it in my answer) – Coding Gorilla Sep 23 '11 at 15:47
The "delete" option worked for me. Thanks! – skeletank Sep 23 '11 at 15:50
@MatthewBrown Keep in mind that means it just gets "black holed" and noone ever knows. – Coding Gorilla Sep 23 '11 at 15:53
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+1 for "Hide from Address Lists". That will mean that any email sent to that group will bounce with an invalid recipient error. However, I'd also suggest looking into Transport Rules, as you can do some interesting things with them.

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If you don't want it to receive any e-mails then it probably doesn't need a mailbox. Mailboxes are generally only for receiving and storing e-mail. You can configure many applications to just send e-mail from an invalid (no mailbox and the e-mail address doesn't exist in your e-mail org) internal e-mail address. I do this all the time for internal e-mail notifications, because I can easily put in the FROM: field where the mail came from:

[app or server name]@domain.com

If you still need a mailbox for this account then here are your options:

  • If you just don't want people to know it exists by browsing the GAL, then open the mailbox in the EMC and click "Hide from Exchange Address lists".
  • If you don't want people to accidentally send mail to it by it being a member of a distribution group, go to the "Member Of" tab and make sure it isn't a member of any distro groups.
  • If you don't want it to get mail period, then you can play around with the Mail Flow Settings tab>Message Delivery Restrictions or Message Size Restrictions or the Mailbox Settings tab>Storage Quotas (Note these options will likely throw an NDR response to the sender)
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up vote 0 down vote

The Global Address List is a list, not a Distribution Group. It's not possibe to send an email to the GAL, only to members of the GAL. Hide this service mailbox from the Exchange address lists and nobody will see it.

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You're stalking me man ;P – Coding Gorilla Sep 23 '11 at 15:31
Don't be surprised if I show up somewhere near Toledo over the weekend ;) – joeqwerty Sep 23 '11 at 15:40

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