Question:
I have to admit, I’m new to the Exchange community. After extensive reading of various books and forums I have managed to configure and setup the IMS, etc.
The problem I now have is that Outlook 2000 will not send or receive any messages. Outbound messages sit in the Outbox of Outlook, and incoming messages sit in the IMS Inbound messages with “pending” on them.
Please help as I can’t see where I have gone wrong and would be extremely grateful for any assistance.
Answer:
From your information, it sounds to me like a mailbox problem or Message Transfer Agent problem as much as anything else.
You should double-click one of the items listed as “pending” and see if it offers you any clues (in the form of error codes or messages) that would tell you why they’re waiting.
Next thing to check would be that you have the mailboxes set up properly, with the correct, associated NT accounts.
A quick test is to go into the Microsoft Exchange Server service properties (Tools | Services in Outlook) and type the user’s alias in the mailbox name field and click the “Check Name” button. It should promptly resolve the name and replace the alias with the display name of the mailbox.
If it doesn’t, you may have a problem with the profile, mailbox configuration, or connection to the Exchange server.
If it does, make sure you can open and view the rest of the folders in the mailbox successfully and that you can send messages successfully to other users on the same Exchange server.
I would also check the event log on the Exchange server and look for any telltale error messages of services that didn’t start or any other errors that might clue you into the cause. That could give you more information to help determine the cause of the problem.
If you get more information, please feel free to post another question and perhaps we can figure it out.
