Odd behaviour in email address handling...
I have been trying to understand why some emails end up with corrupted email addresses and never arrive at their destinations. After revisiting the problem several times over the past few months I have finally been able to come up with a test scenario to demonstrate what now looks like a problem in Exchange (but I'm not sure). We are using: Exchange 2007 GoldMine (CRM) Outlook 2007 The problem occurs when we reply-all in GoldMine to an email that has an email address of the form: "EMAIL REMOVED" <EMAIL REMOVED> . This seems to happen with some email software using the email addresses in place of the name of the recipient although the use of quotes seems a little suspect... I set up a test case where I am emailing myself at my home email address (GMail) and my work address (Exchange). Our Exchange server goes through a gateway machine running Exim (both inbound and outbound). We use GoldMine for email mostly, but I also use Outlook for non-customer related emails. The test specifies my home email address in the form "EMAIL REMOVED" <EMAIL REMOVED> which is how we often receive mail. The email then appears to get delivered to all the recipients as expected, but the EMAIL REMOVED address appears to get broken up to "EMAIL REMOVED someone@" <somewhere.com> or "someone@" <somewhere.com EMAIL REMOVED> depending on whether I am looking at the email address in Google Mail (first case) or Exchange Webmail or Outlook (second case). So I decided to simplify the path a little and instead of sending out through Exchange SMTP I sent it out through our gateway machine with exactly the same email adresses. In this instance the email address as viewed in GMail was uncorrupted ("EMAIL REMOVED" <EMAIL REMOVED> ) but when I looked at the email in Exchange Webmail or in Outlook. The address appeared to be corrupted ("someone@" <somewhere.com EMAIL REMOVED>) . However when I examine the email headers in outlook - the correct address appears! It's only when Outlook (or Webmail) presents the address in the "To: " box on the screen that it is corrupted. However when I reply to this email it tries to deliver to an invalid email address "someone@" . I'm still confused about where exactly the problem lies: Is the email address "EMAIL REMOVED" <EMAIL REMOVED> valid? Is Exchange messing up the address somewhere (I'm beginning to think not)? Is it a bug in Outlook?
October 14th, 2009 11:29am

Please note that the forum has helpfully removed the example email address in the above post so that it now makes little sense. For the sake of complete clarity where it says EMAIL REMOVED above it should read someone_at_somewhere.com where _at_ = @. Thanks!
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October 14th, 2009 11:36am

On Wed, 14-Oct-09 08:29:17 GMT, S3AN wrote:>I have been trying to understand why some emails end up with corrupted email addresses and never arrive at their destinations. After revisiting the problem several times over the past few months I have finally been able to come up with a test scenario to demonstrate what now looks like a problem in Exchange (but I'm not sure).>>We are using:>Exchange 2007>GoldMine (CRM)>Outlook 2007> REMOVED> . This seems to happen with some email software using the email addresses in place of the name of the recipient although the use of quotes seems a little suspect...>>I set up a test case where I am emailing myself at my home email address (GMail) and my work address (Exchange). Our Exchange server goes through a gateway machine running Exim (both inbound and outbound). We use GoldMine for email mostly, but I also use Outlook for non-customer related emails. The test specifies my home email address in the form "EMAIL REMOVED" which is how we often receive mail.>>The email then appears to get delivered to all the recipients as expected, but the EMAIL REMOVED address appears to get broken up to "EMAIL REMOVED someone@" or "someone@" depending on whether I am looking at the email address in Google Mail (first case) or Exchange Webmail or Outlook (second case).> out through Exchange SMTP I sent it out through our gateway machine with exactly the same email adresses. In this instance the email address as viewed in GMail was uncorrupted ("EMAIL REMOVED" ) but when I looked at the email in Exchange Webmail or in Outlook. The address appeared to be corrupted ("someone@" ) .>>However when I examine the email headers in outlook - the correct address appears! It's only when Outlook (or Webmail) presents the address in the "To: " box on the screen that it is corrupted. However when I reply to this email it tries to deliver to an invalid email address "someone@" .>>I'm still confused about where exactly the problem lies:>Is the email address "EMAIL REMOVED" valid?>Is Exchange messing up the address somewhere (I'm beginning to think not)?>Is it a bug in Outlook?It's a bit difficult to tell if you're asking about the message header822header.Is the message being delivered to the correct mailbox? If it is, thenthe RCPT TO is okay.If it's just(!!) the RFC822 header, I'd be looking at any addressrewriting or validation rules in Exim or Goldmine. It wouldn't be the1st time I've seen such a rule mangle a quoted comment or an addresswith an apostrophe in it.I've also seen problems like this when there are multiple addresses ina header and there's a mismatch between what separates the addressesand what the email client expects to separate the addresses (e.g.using a comma when a semicolon is expected).---Rich MatheisenMCSE+I, Exchange MVP--- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP
October 14th, 2009 6:17pm

On Wed, 14-Oct-09 08:36:32 GMT, S3AN wrote:>Please note that the forum has helpfully removed the example email address in the above post so that it now makes little sense. For the sake of complete clarity where it says EMAIL REMOVED above it should read someone_at_somewhere.com where _at_ = @. Thanks! Don't you find it ironic that a forum for email administrators doesthat! Geeze.---Rich MatheisenMCSE+I, Exchange MVP--- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP
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October 14th, 2009 6:18pm

Hi, Its really troublesome to see EMAIL REMOVED every where in a thread. Plz dont remvoe email addresses in a forum which is dealing a popular Email Server. Regards, Laeeq Qazi|Snr Software Engineer(Exchange + Sharepoint + BES + DynamicsCRM) www.hostingcontroller.com
October 15th, 2009 12:59pm

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