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I'm having problems configuring the 'Scan to Email' facility on a Brother MFC8440 network printer. It's shared on a Small Business Server 2003 network on a standard TCP/IP port. All users can print to it and I can connect, via the web-based console, to change settings. The only trouble is that I'm not sure what the LAN/ SMTP settings need to be in order to get it to email scanned documents. Do I need to change anything within Exchange/ AD?

The printer has a permanent IP address. The default gateway settings point to the address of our router. Boot method is 'STATIC' and APIPA is enabled (both default settings - I'll be honest, I don't know what these refer to). Primary DNS server is the IP address of the Domain Controller (as is the case with all client PCs across the network).

SMTP Server address is the address of the server too (as you're probably aware, in SBS Exchange is on the same server) and the printer has an email address specified ().

Can anyone see any glaring errors in this setup? If not, why do I get the message 'Sending Error' when I try to scan a document to my email address?!

This is driving me mad and I'd be really grateful for anyone's help on this!

Thanks in advance!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by gordonsalive200

Dani AI

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Good catch by — the problem and your fix are exactly what you expect when a network MFP cannot authenticate to Exchange. Most MFC scanners submit mail anonymously, so Exchange will refuse the connection unless that device IP (or subnet) is explicitly permitted to connect and relay. Allowing only the printer's IP/subnet is the right fix, and it avoids creating an open relay.

Practical follow-ups and hardening to keep the setup reliable:

  • Use a static IP on the MFP and point its SMTP server to the Exchange server IP (avoids DNS/resolution issues).
  • Confirm the network allows outbound TCP 25 from the MFP (router/firewall rules).
  • Make the printer "From" address use an accepted internal domain so Exchange treats it as internal mail.
  • Restrict relay permission to the single device IP. If you have many devices, consider a dedicated authenticated submission account or a separate relay endpoint rather than opening wide relay access. For Exchange 2007+ use a Receive Connector scoped to the device IPs.

Quick troubleshooting checks you can run:

telnet <ExchangeServerIP> 25
# or on modern Windows:
Test-NetConnection -ComputerName <ExchangeServerIP> -Port 25

Enable SMTP/protocol logging on the server and review the logs (IIS/SMTP log folder) and the MFP's SMTP error/code output to see the exact SMTP reply (eg. 550 relay denied). That will pinpoint whether it is a connection, authentication or relay rejection.

Security note: never grant anonymous relay to broad ranges. Limit by single IPs, or use authenticated SMTP/TLS or a dedicated relay to keep mail flow safe while allowing scanners to submit messages.

Member Avatar for gordonsalive200

Just in case anyone's interested, I found the solution to this... I had to do the following:

Go to the Default SMTP virtual server properties in Exchange System Manager on my SBS server (Administrative Groups>>First Administrative Group>>Protocols>>SMTP>>Default SMTP Virtual Server>>Right-Click>>Properties)

Then, on the 'Access' tab, click on 'Connection' and grant access to the subnet of the network to connect to this virtual SMTP server by clicking 'Add', then ensuring the 'Group of Computers' button is highlighted. Add the first IP address in the range to the 'Subnet Address' box and the Subnet Mask () to the relevant box.

Then follow the same procedure in the 'Relay' section of this tab.

This allowed the scanner to connect to the SMTP VS and ensured that my scanned documents were relayed through to the correct address.

Success!

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