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Handling an Old Exchange 2007 Mailbox

I am running Exchange Server 2007. I have a mailbox for an employee who passed away. I would like to eliminate the mailbox and have an auto-reply delivered to any sender trying to contact that email address. I would normally just put an open-ended out-of-office message on the mailbox, but I need to eliminate the user to reclaim the license in my anti-SPAM suite (GFI Mail Essentials).

I was told that I can accomplish this task through setting up a new distribution group, but I don't know the specifics for configuring the settings.

Please help.

Simon Butler (Sembee)

A distribution group isn't going to help, because you are still going to need a mailbox to send the OOTO message. The only way to remove the mailbox but still have a message going back is to use a Transport Rule to send an email back.

The other option would be to just remove the account completely and anyone sending a message to the account will get the standard "User Unknown" NDR.

Simon.

HellmaUS

ASKER

Thanks.

I guess the transport rule is the way I need to go. At what level do I create the transport rule? In the Organizational Configuration or the Server Configuration?

HellmaUS

ASKER

So I created a Hub Transport rule. It grabs the aliases I want to retire and send a DSN back to the sender.

I wanted to have a specific message so I used the cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell to set 5.7.17 to a custom message and specified that in the Hub Transport rule(see 1st pic).

The problem is that the message does not show up in the Undeliverable response from the server.

The message does show up when I use the system code of 5.7.1.

What have I done wrong in setting this up?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Simon Butler (Sembee)

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