Out of office assistance not working...

[Snow-Munki]

Hi,

have a client here who just called me and ask why their out of office assistance isn't work.

it works fine with internal emails but ones from external address don't work. I can't see any option in outlook for this..

any ideas ? using Windows 2000 proand Outlook 2000 with a Windows 2000 server / exchange.

???

[Jiff Lemon]

On system manager, Look under internet Message Format. Check the default domain and under the advanced tab, you may find Out of Office Replies are not delivered externally. Check with the company before changing this.

Also how are you testing it? Exchange is intelligent enough to realise it's already sent an out of office response, so won't tell you a second time.

[Snow-Munki]

thanks, went to system manager and the right place and ticked the box to turn on Out of office assistant...

and still doesn't seem to be working ?

does she need to log out and re log in ? reboot of server ?

[Snow-Munki]

According to M'soft

On the Exchange server, start Exchange System Manager.
Double-click Global Settings, and then click Internet Message Formats.
In the Details pane, right-click a domain name, and then click Properties. The default SMTP domain is "*".
In the Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab, and then click to select the Allow out of office responses check box. This turns on out-of-office responses to the Internet for the selected domain.
Stop the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine services, and then restart them.

How do i restart the services is it literally services.msc ?

[Apex]

yup iirc

[Snow-Munki]

well i did exacatly that, restarted the services... and just emailed her but got no reply...

*sigh* so either still not working or she hasn't got it turned on !!

[Spunkey]

this is a known problem with the OOOA - it happens at my company a lot.

We instead use rules in outlook rather than the assistant - try this (in Outlook 2000)...

1. Tools > Rules Wizard > New
2. Check messages when they arrive, Next
3. Where my name is in the To or Cc box, Next
4. Have the server reply using a specific message (in the description box click 'specific message' and type your own in), Next
5. Add whatever exceptions you want.
6. Name it, click finish, and test it

HTH

[scottyman]

lol - also, check your smtp connector properties -
content restrictions -> allowed types
I'm fairly sure that an out of office message is a system message

[Snow-Munki]

seemed to be working now thanks

however, her 'other' address doesn't work..

and that's about all i know, don't even know where its hosted ... some help she is

[scottyman]

other addresses being aliases? correct? if so - they won't. will only respond on the primary address. unless she's using other mailboxes - in which case she'll have to repeat the process on each mailbox in turn.