sharing reply to address
Hello all. I am having some fun trying to configure Exchange 2003 in SBS2003 for a client. The client has one email address supplied by their ISP, and they want all the emails that go out from the exchange server to show address1@ispdomain.com as the reply address. The POP connector and the SMTP connectors are all configured, and when the exchange server pulls the messages from the ISP mailserver, it delivers them to a DistList which splits it to all the domain users email accounts. When I go into the ADUC and try to set that email address under the email addresses for each user so that it sets that as the replyto, after the first one it gives the message that the address already exists and cannot be used. Is there a way to configure it so that emails from 5 different userscan be stamped with the same replyto address in Exchange?
November 7th, 2007 11:17pm
Short Answer.. No.
Long answer
So, you would have to create an ACCOUNT with the address, let everyone have "Send as" rights to the account and open in their Outlook Clients along with their primary. Then you would have to tell everyone to use the "From" field in Outlook to choose the account when sending. That would be very ugly. It would also break everyone getting a copy of every inbound e-mail, unless you told the account to forward to a distribution list. Then you would have an empty account, and the ability to "Send As" that account. Still very, very ugly and confusing.
Why do they all want to send as the same person?
John G.
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November 8th, 2007 12:38am
It is a very small company, and the owner wants to see all the emails to and from the address. I know, you are thinking there are SO many easier ways to manage this, which is what I said and recommended multiple email accounts which would resolve the problem, but he didn't like that answer. Sometimes, being the company that asks what the client wants to do and making every effort to do it their way is very frustrating, but we don't usually lose business to competitors...lol... You are right about the send as and other options being ugly for the end user, and I had explored all of them and dismissed them, which is why I finally called MS support, paid the Fee, and ended up with 2 MS Exchange engineers on the phone most of the afternoon, just to get the workaround you suggested, which they agreed isn't that pretty of a workaround. A better workaround (which takes a heck of a lot less config) is to set the outlook local clients to use POP3 (the single email address is actually one from their ISP) and exchange, then just select the account to send from depending on where the email is going - exchange for internal, POP3 for external, but then we are still at the ugly solution for the end user having to remember to select something everytime they send an email. MS is doing some more research and looking into if there is a way to automate the process for the end user or not, but I think I will probably fall back on some other options like disabling the exchange email accounts and running it all through POP3, which incidentally allows me to have them all send as the same person with minimal config...
Thanks John.
November 8th, 2007 2:54am