Supported methods to replay outgoing SMTP messages in Exchange 2003 or in Exchange 2000

This article describes the supported methods that you can use to replay the outgoing Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) messages on a computer that is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.

The SMTP envelope of a message contains information about the sender and the recipient or the recipients of that particular SMTP message. The SMTP envelope is also known as the P1 or the RFC 2821 envelope.

The information in the SMTP envelope does not always match the information that appears in the message headers. The message headers are also known as the P2 or the RFC 2822 headers.

Examples of where this information does not match include all the following:

• Situations where recipients are located on different Exchange servers
• Situations where messages are sent to one or more distribution groups
• Situations where the blind carbon copy (Bcc) field is used in a message

Supported methods to replay messages

We support the following methods to replay SMTP messages.

Note Other methods to replay messages could cause one or both of the following situations to occur:

• Duplicate e-mail messages may be delivered to some recipients or to all recipients.
• Certain recipients may not receive a copy of the e-mail message. Additionally, the message sender may not receive notification of the message delivery failure.

Drop folder to Pickup folder

The Pickup folder processes outgoing messages that are created as text files and then copied to the Pickup folder. When Request for Comments (RFC) 822 messages that are correctly formatted are copied to the Pickup folder, the SMTP service initiates delivery. In this replay method, the X-Sender envelope field and the X-Receiver envelope field are written to the e-mail message when the SMTP service puts the e-mail message into the Drop folder.

Note The SMTP service puts the e-mail message into the Drop folder for local delivery on a computer where Exchange is not installed.

In this scenario, the Pickup operation honors the envelope fields that are written to the e-mail message.

Queue folder to Queue folder

The Queue folder holds messages for delivery. If a message cannot be delivered because the connection is busy or is down, the message is stored in the Queue folder. Subsequent delivery attempts occur at designated intervals. To use this method to replay e-mail messages, you must first stop the SMTP service. Additionally, the e-mail messages must remain on volumes that are formatted with the NTFS file system. In this replay method, the message envelope is retained in RAM on the computer and is written to the hard disk as an alternate file stream. As long as this file stream is intact, the SMTP service can read the message envelope.

Badmail folder to Pickup folder

When an e-mail message cannot be delivered, Exchange generates a non-delivery report (NDR) delivery status notification message and then delivers this NDR message to the original message sender. If the NDR message cannot be successfully delivered, the NDR message is put in the Badmail folder.

Note The Badmail folder feature must be enabled for this process to occur. By default, the Badmail folder is disabled in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: If the problem that stopped the NDR message from being successfully delivered is resolved, you may want to resend the NDR message to the sender of the corresponding original e-mail message.

Note You may want to replay only the message delivery failure delivery status notification messages and not also the message delivery delay delivery status notification messages.

Important We recommend that you do not resend the original messages to the original recipients. Instead, let the original sender resend the original message to the original recipient or recipients. The original message is generally included with the NDR message as an attachment.

To replay the messages that are located in the Badmail folder, follow these steps:

1. Stop the SMTP service.
   1. Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.
   2. Right-click Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP), and then click Stop.
2. Copy all the files that are located in the Badmail folder and that have the .bad file name extension. Then, paste these files to the Pickup folder.
   
   Note By default, the Badmail folder and the Pickup folder are located in the following folder:
   %SystemRoot%\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mailroot\Vsi 1
3. Delete the .bad file name extension from all the .bad files that are located in the Pickup folder.
4. Start the SMTP service.
   1. Click Start, click Run, type services.msc, and then click OK.
   2. Right-click Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP), and then click Start.
5. Verify that the messages were delivered.

Note When you replay messages that are located in the Badmail folder, the messages are not delivered to the recipients who were originally listed in the Bcc box. Also, some recipients may receive duplicate messages if they successfully received the original message.

File types that may appear in the Badmail folder

• A .bad file is an actual message that is in native SMTP format. A .bad file is a text file.
  
  The following is an example of the contents of a .bad file:
  To: user_name@external_domain_name.com
  From: test_user@internal_domain_name.com
  Subject: This is a test
  
  This is a test.
• A .bdp file is a diagnostic message that points to a local .eml file. In this case, the .eml file is a non-delivery report (NDR).
  
  The following is a sample .eml file path and file name that a .bdp file might point to:
  C:\Inetpub\Mailroot\Queue\NTFS_8ce5674a83c125900000001a.eml
• A .bdr file is the body of the NDR. A .bdr file includes the error code, the message sender, and the message recipients. The following is an example of the contents of a .bdr file:
  Unable to deliver this message because the follow error was encountered:

  This message is a delivery status notification that cannot be delivered.

  The specific error code was 0xC00402C7.
  The message sender was message_sender@domain_name.com.
  The message was intended for the following recipients.
  recipient_1@domain_name.com
  recipient_2@domain_name.com
  

For more information about RFC 822, visit the following Web site: