Exchange reporting about any delivery failure

Question

We have a new exchange server in our organization, and sometimes users report an email that failed to deliver. Typically, I believe that it is related to size or content restrictions from either the firewall or the exchange server itself...

I'd like to know how I can see all failures (rejects, failures, etc) of messages in the Exchange Server... whether looking at log data, or even setting up some kind of notification.

Is this possible in Exchange? Can someone point me to where I'd need to look to set this up or view the failed transactions?

(yes, clearly anything blocked by the firewall will not be recorded in exchange)

Answer 1

You have not mentioned your Exchange version. But in all versions of Exchange you can set up a specific account to receive generated NDRs.

• The procedure for Exchange 2007 and later organisations is outlined in the Technet Exchange Documentation and requires issuing some PowerShell commands - which exactly depends if you want internal NDRs (for mail which originated from your internal users) or external NDRs (for mail from external addresses)
• for Exchange 2000 and 2003 use the properties of your SMTP virtual server to set the mail address to receive copies of internal NDRs.

From 2007 on you also could either use the Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant (integrated with the Exchange Management Console) to troubleshoot message delivery problems. Or simply search the message tracking log on your own - either using the GUI or PowerShell:

[PS] C:\Windows\System32> Get-MessageTrackingLog -Server <Servername> -Start "01/01/2012 00:00:00" -EventID FAIL