Exchange substituting domain, failed delivery

[ThePhatCoder]

Hi all,

I'm new to Exchange, knowing just enough to be dangerous (so feel free to flame me if I'm being stupid !).

I'm looking after a corporate setup, where a POP3 server is used by all staff for email using username@corporate.com where username is the user's name and corporate is our registered domain name.
I'm trying to get Exchange to work with the aim of migrating users over. I've set myself up on there (using a POP3 connector) but when I send an email to another user internally (e.g. johnd@corporate.com), I receive a non delivery report saying :-
"Name service error for name=domain.local
type=A: Host not found"
Something (Exchange I presume) is substituting our corporate domain name for the SBS 2003 domain name (which was set up as "domain.local").

I'm guessing exchange is trying to be smart and save our bandwidth by routing the email internally by matching the outgoing email address to our active directory/GAL.

Is there any way to stop this or get it to append corporate.com instead of domain.local ?

Thanks for any suggestions offered.

PhatCoder.

 

[Crestman]

Hello,

Goto sys man > Receipts > Reciept policies and goto the properties of the default policy.

goto email address and select new smtp the add you domain (ie.corporate.com)

apply this and make sure its ticked then you will be able to change the AD entries to use your domain name instead of the .local

Crest

 

[ThePhatCoder]

Hi Crest,

Thanks for the tip.
I had already tried changing the policy and it didn't seem to help. I've also changed the email address in AD for all users (they were all listed as <username>@domain.local). I noticed as well that there appeared to be a separate email address in Exchange to the one in the user properties (the SMTP one listed in the GAL, alongside the X400 address which I don't think we need).

Should the setting take effect straight away ? (we're not linked to any other Ex. Servers)

The GAL doesn't seem to reflect changes I've made to the user under the "E-mail Addresses" tab - if I bring up the addressee properties from the Address Book it doesn't show changes I've made like spelling corrections or locale changes to the X400 address.
Does this suggest the GAL needs to be synchronised or something ?

What about the check-box "Automatically update e-mail addresses based on recipient policy" - does this have anything to do with the problem ?

Thanks again in advance of any help.

PhatCoder

 

[Crestman]

hmm. have you created the mailbox for the new user you setup? i had the same problem sending to people who hadnt yet logged on and created a mailbox store.

As for the "Automatically update e-mail addresses based on recipient policy", i have it ticked on mine so its maybe worth a try.

Crest

 

[ThePhatCoder]

Sorry Crest, I wasn't clear.

Everyone is using their own POP3 mailbox on a seperate server.
I've set myself up on Exchange and created a POP3 connector so Exchange hangles my incoming and outgoing email.

When I send an email to one of the other users it would previously have been sent directly to the POP3 server but now it goes through exchange which screws up by changing the domain name.
Exchange still sends the email to the POP3 server but in doing so changes the recipient domain name to "domain.local".
It only does this for email addresses that match entries in the GAL, email works fine for external users.

The problem seems to be Exchange is trying to convert an external email address to an internal one because it believes there is no point sending the email outside of the company when the recipient is internal.
I don't know what mechanism performs this task or how to control/disable it.

Thanks.