Exchange 2003: Finding NDR e-mail addresses ?

Hey guys,

I also posted this on powershellcommunity.org, but perhaps someone here knows
about this:

I have an issue with your marketing department sending out a newsmail, that
gets a LOT of errors. About 25% of the recipients cause an NDR. I'm of course
a bit... tired... of that, so I was thinking about finding some way to find
those e-mail addresses.

Of course, I could just mark all the NDR's in Outlook, press Forward, and
leave them to fry ;o)

However, the service minded systems administrator that I am, I would much
rather just provide them with a list of e-mails, and possibly the reason
why the address caused an NDR.

As far as I can see, there's really no place I can see, where NDR's are registered
or stored.

However, I do have access to the smtp logfiles.

But can anyone tell me which specific smtp codes will cause an NDR ? Cause
that would give me something to filter by.

Then the string-gymnastics isn't hard, I can do that.

I'll do this as a powershell script, and I'll happily post the finished script
for everyone else to use if you'd like.

Hope someone has the time to help me out on the smtp statuscode part

Or, some other way of finding out which e-mail addresses have triggered an
NDR, via Powershell of course. I want to script it so I can do this over
and over again Cause I'm pretty sure this will come in handy once in a while.

Best Regards,
Jacob Saaby Nielsen
mailto:jacob.saaby@xxxxxx

Jacob Saaby Nielsen wrote: Google for "exchange 2003 ndr smtp code", and you'll find some gems.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/284204

I don't know what these will look like in the SMTP log though.

--
Microsoft MVP - Windows PowerShell
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp

PowerGadgets MVP
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Blog:
http://marcoshaw.blogspot.com

Do you want to read all NDR messages from your Outlook? What Exchange version?

-----
Shay Levi
$cript Fanatic
http://scriptolog.blogspot.com
Hebrew weblog: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/scriptfanatic

Hey Shay,

Exchange 2003, with an Exchange 2000 smtp frontend.

Problem is, I delete all the NDR messages, cause my mailbox size explodes
when I receive X hundreds
of NDR's with newsletters

So I can't get them from Outlook. Which means I gotta trawl the smtp logs
for 5xx status codes.

Best Regards,
Jacob Saaby Nielsen
mailto:jacob.saaby@xxxxxx

Hi

Two options:

1. Parse your SMTP log files for numeric error codes (PowerShell or LogParser),
see Marco's link.
2. Create new mailbox for NDRs or set a custom folder on your mailbox and
redirect (rule) NDRs to that folder.
I can contribute a PowerShell code snippet to walk through all NDRs and
parse the message for the error description.


What do you say?


-----
Shay Levi
$cript Fanatic
http://scriptolog.blogspot.com
Hebrew weblog: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/scriptfanatic

Hey Shay,

I would be most grateful Can you include the option of matching on the
subject ?

That would kinda narrow it down a whole lot, and make it usable on a "per
event"
basis

Best Regards,
Jacob Saaby Nielsen
mailto:jacob.saaby@xxxxxx

Here's my suggestion using Outlook, it's a sample code and you can be refined
in many ways:

1. Create new folder "NDRs" under your mailbox.
2. Under the NDRs create "Done" sub folder folder

##### PowerShell to Outlook code #####

## make sure Outlook is open

$olFolderInbox = 6;
$outlook = new-object -com outlook.application;
$ns = $outlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI");
$NDRs = $ns.GetDefaultFolder($olFolderInbox).Folders.Item("NDRs")


$NDRs.Items | foreach {
if($_.UnRead){

## you can add here subject test match
# if($_.subject -match "something") { do something...}

## check the message body text
# if($_.body -match "something") { do something...}

# mark message us read and (optionally) move it to done folder
$_.UnRead= $false;
#[void]$_.Move($NDRs.Folders.Item("Done"));

## optionally, delete (dont move the message )
# $_.delete
}
}



-----
Shay Levi
$cript Fanatic
http://scriptolog.blogspot.com
Hebrew weblog: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/scriptfanatic