i am getting the error sending email to users that have an external email address The user or users have been added successfully, but there was an error in sending the e-mail message. The server may not be set up correctly to send e-mail. To verify that e-mail is configured correctly, contact your server administrator. i get the following event id on sharepoint server Log Name: Application Source: Windows SharePoint Services 3 Date: 2/24/2010 8:09:33 AM Event ID: 7946 Task Category: E-Mail Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: Description: Cannot complete this action.

Looks like you do not have your outbound email configured in sharepont. Go to Central Admin -> Operations -> Outgoing E-mail Settings to set it up. There is no authentification, so you will need to make sure that your SMTP server accepts unauthentificated requests from your MOSS Server.Paul Shkurikhin blog.sharepointalist.com

Hi Ashley, I agree with Paul. First you should check whether you configure outgoing e-mail settings, if not, please refer to the following article to configure outgoing e-mail settings. After determining which SMTP server to use, the SMTP server must be configured to allow anonymous access and to allow e-mail messages to be relayed. Configure outgoing e-mail settings (Office SharePoint Server) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263462.aspx From your post, you want to send e-mail to external user, your SMTP server must have Internet access or it must be able to relay authenticated e-mail to a server that has Internet access. The SMTP server that you use can be a server in the farm, or another server. Next go on to the http://site > shared documents > action > alert me > you assign to yourself and then make sure you can get the Initial Alert. After finishing the actions above, you can run the following command to verify alert properties: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsadm.exe -o getproperty -url http://site -pn alerts-enabled The expected output should be <Property Exist="Yes" Value="yes" /> C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN>stsadm.exe -o getproperty -url http://site -pn job-immediate-alerts it should show Property Exist="Yes" for that specific site and it output was showing job-immediate-alerts "every 5 minutes between 0 and 59" Hope this helps. Rock WangRock Wang MSFT