"550 5.6.0" NDR when a journal report is sent to an external contact in an Exchange Server 2010 environment

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

• You create a journaling mailbox in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 environment. The mailbox is not in the same database as the mailboxes of other users.

• You create a message rule for the journaling mailbox in Microsoft Outlook 2010. The rule forwards all journal reports to an external contact.

• You create a send connector that has the address space configured as an asterisk (*).

• You configure the send connector to send all outgoing email messages to an external Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server so that the journal mails are routed to that SMTP server.

• You create a remote domain as the target domain for the journal reports.
  
  
  Note To create a remote domain in Exchange Management Console, click Organization Configuration, click Hub Transport, click Remote Domains, and then click New Remote Domain.
  
  

• You configure the message format of the remote domain to never use Exchange rich-text format for email messages that are sent to the remote domain.
  
  
  Note For example, to configure the message format of the remote domain in Exchange Management Console, right-click the remote domain, click Properties, click Message Format, and then select Never use under the Exchange rich-text format heading.
  
  

• A user sends an email message through SMTP (for example, POP3), and the email message contains a zero-byte attachment.

In this scenario, the journal report is not delivered to the external contact. Additionally, the user receives a non-delivery report (NDR) that contains the following error message:

Cause

This issue occurs because an ObjectNotFoundException exception is thrown when the Exchange server processes the zero-byte attachment in the original email message in the journal report. However, the Exchange server does not handle the exception, and the user receives the NDR.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, install the following update rollup:

2685289 Description of Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2

Status

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

More Information

For more information about journaling, go to the following Microsoft website:

General information about journalingFor more information about message routing, go the following Microsoft website:

Understanding message routingFor more information about how to never send email messages in the Exchange rich-text format, go to the following Microsoft website:

How to never send email messages in Exchange rich-text format