Member Avatar for troverman

This is puzzling. We have a small organization running our own Exchange 2003 server for about 25 users. We hired a new employee recently, and I created a new user in Active Directory by copying an existing account, same as I have done for over 10 years. That all went fine, including creating the mailbox. However, setting up a profile on a Windows 10 Pro PC running Outlook 2010 does not allow full email functionality. The new user can send and recieve in-house emails, can send emails to external addresses, but cannot recieve mail from any external addresses. All other users in the company are sending and recieving external emails as usual.

I've tried restarting all Exchange services, restarted the whole server, uninstalled and reinstalled Office 2010, deleted and created new profiles for email; deleted and recreated this user's Active Directory profile, all to no avail.

I'm not doing anything different than I ever have, but this address just won't work properly.

I did have a hard time even getting Outlook to open at first. I would get the "cannot open your default email folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile..." message and then Outlook would close. After deleting and recreating this user's profile in AD did this message finally go away. Not sure if they are related.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

  • 2 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 439 Views
  • 1 Hour Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by troverman

Dani AI

Generated

Brief, practical follow-up based on ’s thread and ’s TLS note — useful for anyone who sees “one mailbox can send externally but won’t receive external mail.”

  • Reproduce and observe the handoff. Send a test message from an external account (unique subject) and ask the sender for any bounce/DSN text. Check the perimeter/gateway logs or quarantine first — many gateways perform recipient verification and will reject or quarantine mail for addresses they don’t know about. (help.proofpoint.com)

  • Trace the SMTP hop from perimeter to Exchange. Enable SMTP protocol logging on the Exchange 2003 SMTP virtual server and inspect the receive logs (default IIS/SMTP log folder). If the perimeter accepted the message but Exchange never sees it, the problem is upstream. If Exchange sees the session but doesn’t deliver, use the Queue Viewer and Message Tracking Center to follow the message path. (ftp.zx.net.nz)

  • Check how the gateway knows about users. Common setups use LDAP/AD sync, CSV import, or manual provisioning; if the new mailbox isn’t provisioned on the gateway, that appliance may reject mail before it ever reaches Exchange. Make provisioning automatic (LDAP/AD sync) or add a short onboarding step to update the filter. (help.proofpoint.com)

  • Longer-term caution: Exchange 2003 is out of support and can run into modern TLS/security compatibility problems; plan migration or place an up-to-date gateway in front of legacy servers to avoid delivery failures and security risk. (learn.microsoft.com)

These steps let you pinpoint “who accepted the SMTP session” (sender’s server, your filter, or Exchange) and then fix provisioning, routing, or protocol issues quickly.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for rproffitt

By "this address just won't work properly." do you mean their email address are your company or are you trying to pick up their mail on an external server?

Why I ask is you can find folk talking about TLS and Outlook 365 breakage.

The TLS implementation in 2003 is not compatible with the Office 365 servers. There is no work around. Turn off TLS, or don't get mail from Office 365 (and presumably a growing number of servers).

Member Avatar for troverman

The new user is set up with an email account on our Exchange 2003 server. She can send/recieve internal emails from our domain, send to external domains, but cannot recieve email from any external domain.

Update
I have fixed it. She was not set up in our ProofPoint external email filter. Apparently DNS routes our mail to the proofpoint server first, so it would never get to our exchange server. After adding her, external-domain mail is now flowing in as normal.

Thanks

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.