I have a scenario where I need to setup an out of office for a user that does not exist in my exchange org (OrgA). The user exists in OrgB but for another reason, we have emails being sent to this user in OrgA. So I need a mechanism to send out of office type notices to anyone that sends email to this non existant address, advising them to resend to the correct address. Do I have to setup a mailbox for this user in OrgA to facilitate this? Is there any other way to do this? What is the best way to achieve this? Thanks

You could create a Contact object in OrgA and set the target address to correspond to the SMTP address of the OrgB recipient. Set the address that people are incorrectly sending to as a secondary SMTP address on the Contact. That way, the emails will simply be re-directed and not non-delivered. Tony

Hi Tony, thanks for the update. I looked at doing this early on, but we have legal reasons where we cannot be seen to accept emails for that user within OrgA. The mechanism has to reject them and send an NDR or OOF explaining this user does not exist in this org, but providing the correct email contact address. Is there no other mechanism available? Thanks for the input.

In that case, I can't think of any other way to do it with Exchange other than creating a mailbox-enable user and setting the OOF response. Tony

Hi NME, Your request is invalid. When an email is sent to the non existent address, the sender will get deliverable message from sender's mail service provider domain. If you want to set up NDR or OOF and reply it from the domain which used to contain non existent email address, then you need to receive it first. It is like a handover from the sender's mail domain. Due to legal reason, you can not receive emails to that non existent address, so you can not customize NDR or OOF. Hope that answers your question. A mechanism can only be found when it is logically possible. Thanks, James

Hi NME, Your request is invalid. When an email is sent to the non existent address, the sender will get deliverable message from sender's mail service provider domain. If you want to set up NDR or OOF and reply it from the domain which used to contain non existent email address, then you need to receive it first. It is like a handover from the sender's mail domain. Due to legal reason, you can not receive emails to that non existent address, so you can not customize NDR or OOF. Hope that answers your question. A mechanism can only be found when it is logically possible. Thanks, James I agree with James if you do a OOF you are still accepting the mail for that user to a mail enabled mailbox and the NDR can't be done for a single user A contact object would be your best bet because it is relaying the message to OrgB and not being accepted and stored in a database in OrgANetwork+,Security+,NCSA,MCTS,MCPS,And MCITP

Create the user contact in OrgA with the exact address and create a transport rule with the conditions: 1. when an email is sent to the newly created address 2. send a bounce message to the sender with the message Regards from www.windowsadmin.info | www.blog.windowsadmin.info