How to Enable or Disable Message Filtering on a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Virtual Server

This article describes how to enable or disable message filtering on a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) virtual server.

When you enable message filtering on an SMTP virtual server, messages received from people on the message filter list are not accepted. For example, if you have an SMTP virtual server that is connected to the Internet, you can filter messages from Internet users who attempt to send messages to your organization through a particular Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, on the same virtual server, you may want to configure a different IP address for people in your organization to use to connect to the Internet. For those people, you do not want to enable message filtering.

The message filter list is a global setting that is defined for the entire organization, but message filtering is enabled on an SMTP virtual server for a particular IP address. Different groups of people can log on to an Exchange computer with different IP address and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port combinations. You can decide what combinations, and therefore what people in your organization, will have their messages filtered.

Note Before you can enable message filtering on an SMTP virtual server, you must create a message filter list. For additional information about how to create a message filter list, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Enabling or Disabling Message Filtering on an SMTP Virtual Server

To enable message filtering on an SMTP virtual server:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. If the Administrative Groups container exists in the left pane, expand it, expand the appropriate administrative group container, expand the Servers container, expand the appropriate server container, and then expand the Protocols container. If the Administrative Groups container does not exist, expand the Servers container in the left pane, expand the appropriate server container, and then expand the Protocols container. To expand a container, double-click the container to the left of the container.
3. In the left pane, click the SMTP container, right-click the appropriate SMTP virtual server in the right pane, and then click Properties.
4. Click Advanced, select the IP address that you want to enable message filtering for, and then click Edit.
5. Click to select the Apply Filter check box, and then click OK three times.

To disable message filtering on an SMTP virtual server, follow these steps, but click to clear the Apply Filter check box in step 5.