In our Exchange 2003 organization, we have enabled "Allow delivery reports" (within Global Settings, Internet Message Formats Properties). Our Exchange infrastructure consists of Backend servers where mailboxes reside and Bridgehead servers that have SMTP connectors to send the e-mail to the internet. When an internal user sends an e-mail to an external recipient and marks "Request a delivery receipt for this message" our bridgehead server sends a delivery report to the internal user stating that the e-mail is being sent to the internet. However, the original e-mail with attachment is also attached to this delivery report. When this message has a large attachment, this is not very convenient. Is it possible within Exchange 2003 to allow Delivery Reports, but strip the original e-mail including attachment? Thanks.

Hi,Did you check this issue for your internal user? Was is also received the same Delivery Reports when sending to the internal user?In fact, this is not decided by the Exchange itself but the destination server since the delivery report is generated by recipient's server. Thus, that is not controlled by our Exchange server.ThanksAllen

Hi Allen, Thanks for your answer. This is for internal users sending e-mail to the internet. It's the following scenario: the user has a mailbox on Backend server A, and the e-mail goes through Bridgehead server B to our e-mail Anti-Virus and Anti-SPAM partner (Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services) and they deliver it to the internet. The user gets a message back from server B: ------------------------------- This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Your message has been successfully relayed to the following recipients, but the requested delivery status notifications may not be generated by the destination. -----------@hotmail.com --------------------------------- This mail has a .txt attachment: --------------------------------- Reporting-MTA: dns;server B Received-From-MTA: dns;server A Arrival-Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 14:31:34 +0200 Final-Recipient: rfc822;-----@hotmail.com Action: relayed Status: 2.5.0 --------------------------------- Also, the original attachment is added to this e-mail. Can you explain this?

Hi,Whether the server B is the Exchange server? Is it used be smarthost for server A?If it is, please understand that the delivery report should be generated by the detination server but not the smarthost. I suggest we create the send connector to send the email to the detination server directlry. Then, check this issue.ThanksAllen

Hi, Server A, Mailbox server, Exchange 2003 has a Routing Group Connector connected to Server B. Server B, Smarthost, Exchange 2003, has an SMTP connector that sends to Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services (MEHS). MEHS sends to receiving mailserver on the internet. The problem is not really that a Delivery Report is being received, but more the fact that the original e-mail including attachment is attached in the Delivery Report. People with limited mailbox storage that are sending 10 MB attachments get 20 MB in their mailbox, the item in Sent Items and the attachment back in the Delivery Report. Is it possible to strip this attachment from the Delivery Report? Also, as seen in the delivery report I pasted above the delivery report is coming from Server B. The receiving organization, if they configured it, is also sending a delivery report.

Hi,I have tested this issue on my lab, but could not reproduce your issue. The from address is the detination server in the delivery report without attachment.Did you try to send the test email directlyfrom Server A? Hope you can do a test.ThanksAllen

Hi Allen, First of all thanks for your help. I need to create an SMTP connector for e.g. hotmail.com and point that directly to a smarthost delivering it to the internet. I can test that and I guess then the result is the same as with your lab situation. But we are not going to implement a different SMTP connector permanently. Our architecture is to have dedicated mailbox servers (like Server A) sending mail through bridgeheads (like Server B). Perhaps you can give me your e-mail address so I can forward you the delivery report I am getting. This is indeed really strange behaviour since I've never seen this before. And we are working with MS Exchange for more than 10 years now with at the moment 30+ servers in our environment hosting 18000 mailboxes. Since we are using our new Bridgehead server (Server B) this happens. All Exchange 2003 boxes, the new bridgehead is a Network Load Balanced Cluster, which is actually the only thing that is different from our previous setup. But I guess this is not an issue. Thanks again, let me know what you think.

Hi Thijsderks,After further research your issue, I found the report for your delivery receipts is the Relay Delivery Status Notifications which is different from delivery receipts.For the Relay Delivery Status Notifications, it comes up when the email is sent via smart host and Allow delivery reports is selected. In Exchange 2003, it's nature of DSN reports included the original message attached.To strip the attachment, you can try the method as the below link:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;308303ThanksAllen

Thanks! I will configure it this way. Exactly what I was looking for. Great stuff.