Automatic replies, automatic forwards and Out of Office to Internet recipients are disabled in Exchange 2000 Server and in Exchange Server 2003

By default, the Allow Out of Office responses, Allow automatic forward, and Allow automatic replies options are disabled in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 3 (SP3) or a later version, and in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. When Microsoft Office Outlook clients create rules to automatically forward messages to Internet recipients, automatically reply with a specific template in a rule, or use the Out of Office feature, the messages are not sent to Internet recipients. Additionally, users do not receive a Non-Delivery Report (NDR). The message tracking log displays "Message submitted to categorizer."

The "More Information" section discusses how to modify this behavior if automatic replies and automatic forwards are required. However, you may not want automatic replies to be sent outside your Exchange organization.

To modify the settings for automatic replies, for automatic forwards and for Out of Office responses, follow these steps:

1. Start Exchange System Manager.
2. Double-click Global Settings, and then click Internet Message Formats.
3. In the Details pane, right-click a domain name, and then click Properties . The default Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) domain is * (asterisk).
4. In the Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab.
5. In the Allowed Types area, click to select the check boxes for the required settings.
6. Click OK.

After you modify these settings, you do not have to restart the Exchange services. But you must quit and restart Outlook for the rules to function correctly. If you want to confirm that the rule fired successfully, do not rely on your Sent Items folder, or on the Forward flag appearing on the message that was autoforwarded. Messages that are autoforwarded with a rule will not appear in the Sent Items folder. Also, the original message will not be flagged with the Forward icon. No errors will be logged on the client for autoforward rules that do not fire successfully.

To troubleshoot rules that do not fire, examine the following:

• Verify that Outlook remains open if the rule in question is marked as (Client Only). Such rules require that Outlook is in an open state to fire.
• Verify the rule configuration, and make sure that another rule is not pre-empting the non-firing rule. If a rule to move an item to another folder exists, and if that rule fires first, subsequent rules will not fire. Incorporate the actions into a single rule.
• If you suspect that the rules are corrupted, you may have to use the MDBVue or CleanSweep tool to resolve the issue. For more information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  320022 How to use the Mdbvu32 utility to remove Inbox rules
  174045 Installing and using the CleanSweep tool

Note Read receipts differ from the system messages that are described in this article.

For more information about how to block read receipts, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: