Delivery is delayed to these recipients or distribution lists:

That is just a delay. Means nothing much really other than the remote server cannot be contacted. Quite common, it could be that the other side are doing some work and the server is down.

Simon.

Okay to give you a better Idea On Monday, I had about 10 emails that wouldn't go through and then got delivered to the party I was mailing about 5 hrs later.
f you could explain youre above that would be great, Im not sure if you mean that my server was delayed or if you mean the receiving server or possible the domain holder and t was an issue with DNS?

Alex  

Alex,

The error you are seeing and what Simon was referring to is not implying anything wrong at your end. The delay message is simply that - a delay. It is telling you that Exchange attempted to communicate with the recipient's mail server, but failed to do so. This is common if the remote server or the server's ISP is down.

You seem to suggest the 10 emails you sent on Monday were to the same recipient or the same email domain; in that case, it is possible that you received 10 delays. Since the messages were transmitted 5 hours later, your server is OK and is able to correctly resolve DNS and connect to the remote server -- it was a remote issue.

Exchange will continually attempt to deliver delayed email usually up to 48 hours after it was first sent, before bouncing the email with an Undeliverable (Failure) message.

-Matt

I will found out and aswer your question but thaks for the update. Alex

The mais are to diffrent email and domains, Alex

The emails are all diffrent and also the domains

Sending to different domains - presumably separate companies and therefore hosted at different locations - would indicate it's a misconfiguration on your part, such as an incorrect DNS or SPF record.

Is mail flow working otherwise?

-Matt

We only get this in occasions it not all the time! For example we had a messgae to two user from a comany one user got it straight away the secound and 1hr or so later. The system is allowing email in and out and seems fine most of the time.

This would indicate to me that the problem is elsewhere and not an issue with your mail system. It seems a bit of a co-incidence that it occurred to 10 separate domains around the same time; are you able to email recipients on those problem domains now without issue?

-Matt

Yes I can its like some days it makes it own mind up. One day its fine the next its not but it only seems to be with one user. The other seem fine which seems odd, The other odd thing was waht I said above.
"We had a messgae to two user from a comany one user got it straight away the secound and 1hr or so later"
I dont know what to say as I cant work it out, I wanted to see if anyone else could help suggest anything.
The other thing is I cant get a tracert ti the static IP to complete!!!

Traceroute isn't an ideal form of troubleshooting, as some firewalls/routers will drop the packets and prevent the process from progressing further.

Do you use any form of email gateway or scanning software/service on outbound mail?

-Matt

Hi Matt,
Thanks for the info, to answer your question turthfully are that I don't know. I am new to SBS 2008 and wish we had 2003 as it works. SBS 2008 is very nice but it is driving me up the wall.
All I know is that I used the wizard to configure the system and all seemed fine. I havent added anything to the system software wise other than ant-virus which is not causing the issue, as I disabled it for a short while. This testing still gave me the same issue..

How does outbound email work then? Are you relaying email via the ISP's SMTP server, or sending it out directly? (You would have specified this during SBS setup).

-Matt

I recive the mail form the domain through the MX recored which points to the SBS 2008.
To send I am just sending it out direct I belive, I would like to check for you though. If you could tell me what you would like to check?
Thansk

I would probably recommend reconfiguring the server and have it relay email through the SMTP Server at the ISP. This reduces a lot of the hassle caused by incorrect DNS records etc., and is generally more appropriate for smaller deployments.

-Matt

Sorry, you wanted to know how to check. Start > All Programs > Microsoft Exchange > Exchange Management Console. Go to Organization Configuration > Hub Transport > 'Send Connectors' tab. Right click the "Windows SBS" Send Connector and click Properties. You can then look at the configuration on the 'Network' tab.

-Matt

Thanks Matt, Please can you tell me when selecting to have email sent via DNS or my ISP email server what will the difference be and why would it make it better? As the first user has no issues, not like the second user who has it daily.
We are sending currently direct through DNS rather than SMTP using the ISP. If you sing the ISP I have no idea what the mail serve would be so I will have to find out first.

Sending directly via DNS means your server connects directly to the recipient's mail server and sends the message. This makes your server the subject of all the DNS checks and so on which must take place on outbound email.

By relaying through the ISP, your server is not subject to these checks. If it is a DNS-related issue, that would be ironed out when choosing to send via the ISP's server.

-Matt

Thanks Matt, Thats Great advice, I will check to see that works and get back to you. Alex

Hi Matt,

I hade a look at your suggestion but the wizard is different from SBS 2003 and I cant find how you would change from DNS to SMTP!!  If you could help that would be appreciated.
I have gone one step further to see what happens though, first I saved a PST for the user that is having the issues, I then deleted him from SBS 2008 and restarted. I then re-created him and dropped the PST back into his outlook profile. I am waiting to see what happens today but I am to hoping for the best. I sent you around 50 emails to different people different domains and I had no issue. I dont know what the difference is but it seems okay. I will come back to you and let you know but if you could point me in the right direction to change from DNS to SMPT using the ISP to send email through that would be great.  

Let me know how you get on. However, if it's not in the wizard, you can switch over to SMTP smart host-based delivery manually. In the area in Exchange Management Console I gave you before, you'd just select the option to send via the ISP, then add the ISP's SMTP server (and login information, if necessary).

-Matt

I was wondering if you could help me? I am trying to send email to aol.co.uk and aol.com using exchange 2003 and 2007 every time I get a delayed message and it never arrives to the email address!!! I dont understand why, I dont have any issues with any other domain only aol!! Any ideas?

Thanks Matt