Outlook 2007 collecting POP3 to Exchange 2003 mailbox

[BrantB]

Hello,

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this, and can therefor
tell me whether or not it should work properly.

We are migrating from a -very- old NT4/Exchange 5.0 system (back end
with Outlook XP (aka 2002) clients running on Win2000 Pro, to an SBS200
system with Outlook 2007 clients running on WinXP Pro. In the ol
system, we have the Outlook clients set to collect from our external PO
mailboxes, and all of those collected emails are stored (or "delivered"
if you like) in the Exchange mailboxes. This is a one-to-on
relationship (i.e. one user has one Outlook profile, configured with on
POP3 account and one Exchange account/mailbox, where the latter i
designated as the delivery destination). It has worked well.

However, in our testing of Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2003 so far, w
seem to be experiencing some outbound email flow problems when we try t
set up the same type of thing. From what I've researched, it may hav
to do with Outlook wanting to select a different account based on th
specific scenario of each message. For instance, assuming that th
Exchange account is set up as "default" in the Outlook profile, the
*new* message will be delivered using the Exchange account. However
for email coming from the external (i.e. POP) mailbox, it looks lik
Outlook will try to process *replies* to those messages by sending mai
using the POP portion of the profile. Is that right?

If that is the case, is there any way to control this behaviour so tha
*-all-* outbound email is processed through the Exchange accoun
(regardless of new or reply, or whether its origins are internal o
external)? Or, are we just out of luck - i.e. no way t
override/control which account Outlook uses to process a given message?
(Oh, BTW, we would like this to be transparent to the users ... so
telling the users to manually select the Exchange account all the time
on each message, is not really what we're looking for here [smile].)

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Brant

PS - Soon, you'll see another/separate posting about the POP3 Connecto
for Exchange in SBS 2003 (but I'll put that one in the Exchange forum).
On the one hand, it is somewhat related to this topic - but, only in s
much as it may be considered an alternative to collecting the POP mai
through Outlook. However, I have some concerns about the POP
Connector, and I didn't want to make this topic too broad; I much prefe
to see forums were the topics are focused and separated. I hope that i
okay

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Yes, instead of using the external SMTP server configuration for your POP3
account, use the configuration of the internal Exchange server.

PS: why not completely switch to having Exchange collect and send all mail?



-----

Hello,

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this, and can therefore
tell me whether or not it should work properly.

We are migrating from a -very- old NT4/Exchange 5.0 system (back end)
with Outlook XP (aka 2002) clients running on Win2000 Pro, to an SBS2003
system with Outlook 2007 clients running on WinXP Pro. In the old
system, we have the Outlook clients set to collect from our external POP
mailboxes, and all of those collected emails are stored (or "delivered",
if you like) in the Exchange mailboxes. This is a one-to-one
relationship (i.e. one user has one Outlook profile, configured with one
POP3 account and one Exchange account/mailbox, where the latter is
designated as the delivery destination). It has worked well.

However, in our testing of Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2003 so far, we
seem to be experiencing some outbound email flow problems when we try to
set up the same type of thing. From what I've researched, it may have
to do with Outlook wanting to select a different account based on the
specific scenario of each message. For instance, assuming that the
Exchange account is set up as "default" in the Outlook profile, then
*new* message will be delivered using the Exchange account. However,
for email coming from the external (i.e. POP) mailbox, it looks like
Outlook will try to process *replies* to those messages by sending mail
using the POP portion of the profile. Is that right?

If that is the case, is there any way to control this behaviour so that
*-all-* outbound email is processed through the Exchange account
(regardless of new or reply, or whether its origins are internal or
external)? Or, are we just out of luck - i.e. no way to
override/control which account Outlook uses to process a given message?
(Oh, BTW, we would like this to be transparent to the users ... so,
telling the users to manually select the Exchange account all the time,
on each message, is not really what we're looking for here [smile].)

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Brant

PS - Soon, you'll see another/separate posting about the POP3 Connector
for Exchange in SBS 2003 (but I'll put that one in the Exchange forum).
On the one hand, it is somewhat related to this topic - but, only in so
much as it may be considered an alternative to collecting the POP mail
through Outlook. However, I have some concerns about the POP3
Connector, and I didn't want to make this topic too broad; I much prefer
to see forums were the topics are focused and separated. I hope that is
okay.

 

[BrantB]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for such a quick response!

I can understand your curiosity [smile]. Normally, where Exchange is
involved, I would indeed set up the server with a full 2-way SMTP
connection. But, there are several contributing factors to not going
that way (this time).

In this particular case, the installation has limited (practical)
options for high speed Internet connections; essentially, all that is
available is a "run of the mill" DSL connection. Again, that in itself
nomrally wouldn't be such an issue - but the users in this installation
(sometimes) deal with very tight deadlines, and at the same time, they
have to deal with large-ish attachments. So, they sometimes need to be
very ... er, uh ... "progressive" about the management of their
bandwidth. As such, they need to have ad-hoc control over when email
flows, in either/both directions ... and a full-time 2-way SMTP
connection wouldn't allow that (or at least, not nearly as easily/simply
as it can be controlled using Outlook - i.e. by either not running
Outlook, or selecting an "off-line" [aka local mailbox only] profile).

You may also find some more insight about this situation in the other
thread that I posted, regarding SBS's POP3 Connector for Exchange ...

http://forums.slipstick.com/showthread.php?t=27926

In addition to the somewhat unique bandwidth considerations, one of the
users is quite nomadic and needs to be able to access email remotely via
a WebMail interface. I realize that Exchange comes with OWA ... but
that would require us to open up port 80 etc. on our firewall and
forward that traffic to the server. Once "exposed" like that,
maintaining/hardening the server becomes much more critical (i.e. more
critical than it is right now, sitting behind a firewall that has *no*
open ports; although, granted, server maintenance is -still- and
important task [smile]). By leaving the email configured with external
POP accounts, the responsibility for hardening etc. remains with our
carefully-selected ISP ... who is *much* better equipped to deal with
that type of burden [smile].

Well, there you have a couple of the bigger considerations (and most
easily explained); there are a handful of factors overall though.

So, on to your suggestion ...

If I understand correctly, you mean that for the Outbound server
setting in the POP portion of the Outlook profile, I would simply put in
the server name of our (internal) SBS server, instead of the usual
"smtp.ourISP.com"? As I was driving home tonight, I started to wonder
about something like that ... but then I thought, "naw, that's too
simple - there's probably some catch to that" [shrug/smile]. Maybe
not(?) [big smile]

If that's all there is to it, that will be great!!!

Brant

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

The only way to control it in this scenario is by setting the POP accounts
SMTP server to use the Exchange as the SMTP (mail.domain.com). Using a POP
Connector to collect the mail outside of outlook would allow all mail to be
sent through Exchange.

http://www.slipstick.com/exs/popconnect.asp has a list of connectors, many
of which are better than the ones built into SBS.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]

Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center: http://www.slipstick.com/

Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Hello,

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this, and can therefore
tell me whether or not it should work properly.

We are migrating from a -very- old NT4/Exchange 5.0 system (back end)
with Outlook XP (aka 2002) clients running on Win2000 Pro, to an SBS2003
system with Outlook 2007 clients running on WinXP Pro. In the old
system, we have the Outlook clients set to collect from our external POP
mailboxes, and all of those collected emails are stored (or "delivered",
if you like) in the Exchange mailboxes. This is a one-to-one
relationship (i.e. one user has one Outlook profile, configured with one
POP3 account and one Exchange account/mailbox, where the latter is
designated as the delivery destination). It has worked well.

However, in our testing of Outlook 2007 and Exchange 2003 so far, we
seem to be experiencing some outbound email flow problems when we try to
set up the same type of thing. From what I've researched, it may have
to do with Outlook wanting to select a different account based on the
specific scenario of each message. For instance, assuming that the
Exchange account is set up as "default" in the Outlook profile, then
*new* message will be delivered using the Exchange account. However,
for email coming from the external (i.e. POP) mailbox, it looks like
Outlook will try to process *replies* to those messages by sending mail
using the POP portion of the profile. Is that right?

If that is the case, is there any way to control this behaviour so that
*-all-* outbound email is processed through the Exchange account
(regardless of new or reply, or whether its origins are internal or
external)? Or, are we just out of luck - i.e. no way to
override/control which account Outlook uses to process a given message?
(Oh, BTW, we would like this to be transparent to the users ... so,
telling the users to manually select the Exchange account all the time,
on each message, is not really what we're looking for here [smile].)

Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Brant

PS - Soon, you'll see another/separate posting about the POP3 Connector
for Exchange in SBS 2003 (but I'll put that one in the Exchange forum).
On the one hand, it is somewhat related to this topic - but, only in so
much as it may be considered an alternative to collecting the POP mail
through Outlook. However, I have some concerns about the POP3
Connector, and I didn't want to make this topic too broad; I much prefer
to see forums were the topics are focused and separated. I hope that is
okay.