At some point over the last 2 weeks, the alert functionality in our MOSS 2007 environment stopped working. Users will receive the "You have setup a new alert" email when configuring a new Alert, but not any actual alerts when an item is added/changed. I investigated the Timer Service on the front end web server and noticed it was Stopped. I restarted the Service and some of the users received upwards of 200 backlogged alerts. I can understand why the user received so many alerts, these would be the alerts that SHOULD have been sent over the last 2 weeks. I just wanted to make sure that this is normal behavior. If the service fails, then the alert emails are set to a type of "pending" status until the service is restarted? Is this accurate or am I misunderstanding something.

Hey Sephiroth0327, It is not normal behavoir for your Timer Service to be stopped. This can happen for a number of reasons to include an intentional (or unintentional) stsadm command. You can use stsadm to make sure that the alerts for that particular site are set properly: stsadm.exe -o setproperty -url <http://yourserver/problemsite> -pn alerts-enabled -pv true stsadm.exe -o setproperty -url <http://yourserver/problemsite > -pn job-immediate-alerts -pv "every 5 minutes" You can also use stsadm to execute all timer jobs immediately stsadm -o -execadmsvcjobs Finally, in general it's good to check out your timer service anytime a regular service does not seem to be performing as expected. I hope that helps!Tom Molskow SharePoint Architect - If I solved the issue please propose my reply as the answer - Thanks!