My apologies if this is not the right group to post but I'm getting desperate.
Currently I have a mailbox (let's refer to it as abc@exchange_pop3.com) hosted in our corporate IS MS Exchange server. This old Exchange 2003 server permits POP3 so that my CRM app can download mails from this mailbox & then auto-generate a ticket# with an email (containing the ticket#) being sent back to the original sender. However, corporate IS has mandated that POP3 must be turned off (as they're migrating all mailboxes to Exchange 2010 server which corporate IS will not be permitting POP3 on it anymore). Thus, I've set up a new postfix SMTP server with Dovecot to support POP3 & redirect my CRM app to download mails from this new postfix server. I'll then have to inform various parties to email their requests to abc@postfix_pop3.com & not to abc@exchange_pop3.com anymore). However, as there are too many parties & some of them may forget despite being informed (old habit die hard), I've retained the mailbox on the Exchange server but with autoforwarding of all mails to the new postfix address. Unfortunately there are cases of people filling in abc@exchange_pop3.com address into both the "To:" & "Cc:" fields when sending to the old Exchange mailbox & when the Exchange server autoforward such mails to the postfix addr, somehow the Exchange server would receive that same mail back & then it would auto-forward the mail to itself (ie abc@exchange_pop3.com) plus to the postfix address again, resulting in volumes of the same mail received at both Exchange & postfix (due to the infinite looping ). I suspect the CRM app auto-generate a ticket mail back to both the sender & abc@exchange_pop3.com & this also contributed to the looping. It's just like when a person who subscribed to a mailing list using his office mail & when he is away on holiday, he set "Out of Office" auto-reply & while he's away, his auto-responder replied to the mailing list & the mailing list sends it back to him & it goes back & forth endlessly. Our Exchange Administrator & me had set Exchange & Outlook rules in an attempt to fix this (to delete mails that originate from the Exchange server & postfix) but it did not help as the "auto-forward" setting takes precedence first over Mail Rules (ie the auto-forwarding function operates on incoming mails first before Mail Rules get to process them) I think this is what my Exchange administrator did to autoforward emails from the old Exchange address to the new Postfix address (which will retain the original sender's address) : In MS Exchange, in each userid’s Properties, under one of “Exchange tabs”, there is the option to copy mail to another email address. Besides educating users not to put both "To:" & "Cc:", is there any way out of this (technically from IT perspective) ? I've seen some mailing list like Sunmanagers that encountered this problem & I heard they have a way out of this so that the subscriber who is away (& set Out-of-Office auto-reply) can be blocked effectively but when he's back, he can still post emails to the mailing list. Roger
