how to implement a catch-all email account in Exchange 2007
Dear Friends, I hope you all are in the best of your health and enjoying your life. I need to know how to implement a catch-all email account in Exchange 2007. Adding a wildcard in front of the users domain in a mailbox configuration doesn't work. Reply me as soon as possible, I am in a great need of this. Regards Rafiq
March 14th, 2007 7:29pm

plz help me i m in a great need of answer of this question
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March 14th, 2007 8:06pm

Create a transport rule to forward the email to a specific emailaddress/mailbox. Transport rules are global for all hub transports. They are saved in AD and used by all transport servers in the Exchange organisation. You can easily create conditions, exceptions and actions which apply to all sent and recieved messages in the organisation.
March 16th, 2007 5:40pm

I too would like to see how to do this. I am not seeing a way in the transport rules how. A specific example would be much appreciated.
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April 26th, 2007 9:07pm

hi Steve. You can configure catch-all mailbox behavior in Exchange 2007 by using transport rules running on an Edge Transport server. This configuration requires an Edge Transport server. You cannot configure catch-all behavior using transport rules on a Hub Transport server. First, create a mailbox that will receive the catch-all e-mail. Make note of the SMTP address, for example catch-all-mailbox@contoso.com Note: for the steps below, if you have multiple Edge Transport servers, you must perform the same procedure on each Edge Transport server if you want all of the servers to send e-mail to a catch-all mailbox. In order to configure catch-all behavior on an Edge Transport server, you must disable recipient filtering on the Edge Transport server. This is required because if we validate whether a recipient exists in the organization on the Edge Transport server, inboundmessages to a non-existant mailbox will be rejected prior to the message reaching the transport rules. Perform the following steps on each Edge Transport server: In the ExchangeManagement Console, click Edge Transport. In the work pane, click the Anti-spam tab, and then select Recipient Filtering. In the action pane, clickDisable. Now you must configure a transport rule to send all messages to a catch-all mailbox. The procedure below configures the transport rule to BCC the message to the catch-all mailbox while allowing the original message to continue on to the originally addressed recipient. This provides an additional benefit because not only do you receive the message as sent by the sender, but the sender will also receive an NDR stating the recipient no longer exists. Perform the following steps on each Edge Transport server: In the ExchangeManagement Console, click Edge Transport. In the work pane, click the Transport Rules tab. Right Click to select New Transport Rule. Provide a Name and Comment, Check "Enable Rule" and click Next. Select the condition "when any recipient address contains specific words". Click on the underlined "specific words" in the lower window and add "@contoso.com" and click OK -> Next. Replace @contoso.com witheach of your recipient domains for which you want to use the catch-all mailbox. You must specify your domain here or all messages, both inbound and outbound, will be sent to the catch-all mailbox. Select the action "Blind carbon copy (BCC) the message to mailbox". If you only want to redirect messages to the catch-all mailbox and do not want to create NDRs back to the original sender, use the "redirect messages to address" action instead. Click on the underlined "addresses" in the lower window and add "catch-all-mailbox@contoso.com" and click OK -> Next. Click "Next" again and "New" to create the Edge Transport Rule. Now when senders send messages to recipients that have email addresses that include the domains you specified in the transport rule, the Edge Transport server will copy the message to the catch-all mailbox. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. David.
April 26th, 2007 9:47pm

Will this procedure only work on Edge Transport roles, or can it work on a hub transport role (we only have one Exchange server with the Hub Transport role)?
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April 27th, 2007 4:44pm

This procedureworks only on Edge Transport servers. Hub Transport servers will reject messages addressed to mailboxes that do not exist before they reach transport rules. There is no way to modify this behaviour. You would need to add an additional server running the Edge Transport server role.
April 27th, 2007 8:03pm

Thank you for the information, unfortunatly it does not help me at this time. But I really do appreciate the time and explanation.
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April 27th, 2007 8:50pm

Hi David, I tried this out and it seems to work except that the catchall catches everything including email for valid users. So basically the catchall gets all email for the entire domain whether the user exists or not. I setup an exception to this rule to exclude recients that contain the name of a valid user mailbox and this seems to work for most cases, but I would have to add every user to this exception list for the catchall to work like a true catchall. Is there a way around this? For exchange 2003, I had to use a vbscript that checks the message through the sink and that worked. Is there something similar we can do to validate if the user exists without having to add new users to the exceptions list of the transport rule? So if I have a user called test, and i add "test" to the exclusion in the rule, a cas when this would fail is if the email was sent to abctest@domain.com. in this case i don't have a abctest user, but the exception would assume this since the name containts test. Thanks
May 7th, 2007 11:31am

hi there. You can match exact SMTP addresses by using the "except when the text patterns appear in any recipient address" and then using the ^ and $ pattern strings around the SMTP address. For example, if you want to match only the address joe@contoso.com, use the expression: ^joe@contoso.com$ This will match only joe@contoso.com. It will not match maryjoe@contoso.com. The drawback to this is if joe@contoso.com and bob@contoso.com are recipients on a message,the message will not be sent to the catchall mailbox because joe@contoso.com matches the exception. So this may not work for you. Alternately, depending on the size of your organization, you may want to use a couple of Exchange Management Shell scripts to export SMTP addresses from your AD organization and then import them into the transport rule exception ona recurring basis. Finally, if neither of those options work for you, you could create a transport agent to manage the catch-all address and include the flexibility you require. Thanks David.
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May 8th, 2007 1:17am

Thanks David, I didn't know we can use standard regex patterns. It works as I expect now, so I'll stick to that until someone develops a transport agent that can handle this more seemlessly. It looks pretty hard to create the transport agent since I'm not really a developer. It seems to be such a simple thing I would expect as an option but overall I'm happy with the new exchange server.
May 8th, 2007 11:04am

Thanks for all who participate in this topic. Hope lot of other people have made the most of this topic.
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May 22nd, 2007 12:31am

I have implemented such a catch all agent that can do this, and you can dowload it here: http://www.codeplex.com/catchallagent If it doesn't do what you want, just add requests through the discussion at that forum and I can see if I can add it. -Wilbert
October 20th, 2007 8:00pm

Thanks Wilbert been looking for that for a while. Any progress, reproductions on the "case sensitive" issue? Olli SBS MVP
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December 30th, 2007 10:18pm

This is a great solution, but won't creating a catch all mailbox be creating a spam magnet, too. At least it seems like it would be if you are getting hit by zombies and bots.
December 31st, 2007 12:15am

Yes, you are right, but my experiance is that nearly all of that dictionary emailadress attacks are filtered by IMF, so in practise this doesn't bother me by now. And withthis methode you can only set one or some domains as catchall but do not need to generally open all domains to catchall, as you have to with most other transport rule solutions and/or Ex2003. BTW: I just wrote a little pictured HowTo about Wilberts Transport agent on our Windows Essential Business Server site: http://dnn.ebsfaq.com/Exchange2007/Edge/CatchallTransportAgent/tabid/1208/Default.aspx
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December 31st, 2007 2:51am

This method works for meCreate a contactUse the email address or addressesyou are trying to filter in the Email Addresses tab of the contact properties.Uncheck Automatically update e-mail addressesCheck hide from exchange address lists.Click OkIn the hub transport rule use the Contact in "When any of the recipient in the to or CC fields are people"Then Redirect the message to the Catch-All Account.ItWorking hereCheers
December 17th, 2008 7:22pm

I needed a catch all for both incoming and outgoing.....plus I didn't want to modify this rule everytime we change staff.Here is what works great for me.....creat 2 rule one for incoming and one for outgoing.1) Open Exchange Mgmt.2) Open Org. Config.3) Click onto Hub Transport and Click Transport Rules4) Create 2 new Rules as follows.Create rule for mail sent to people inside this organization from people outside this organization and select BCC as the action.Create your secondr rule for mail sent to people outside this organization from people inside this organization and select BCC as the action.This will prevent you getting spam and having to manually modify your rules.Enjoy ;-)
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May 27th, 2009 1:24pm

I needed a catch all for both incoming and outgoing.....plus I didn't want to modify this rule everytime we change staff. Here is what works great for me..... creat 2 rule one for incoming and one for outgoing. 1) Open Exchange Mgmt. 2) Open Org. Config. 3) Click onto Hub Transport and Click Transport Rules 4) Create 2 new Rules as follows. Create rule for mail sent to people inside this organization from people outside this organization and select BCC as the action. Create your secondr rule for mail sent to people outside this organization from people inside this organization and select BCC as the action. This will prevent you getting spam and having to manually modify your rules. Enjoy ;-) This is brilliant. Well done, you saved my butt. The settings I used (exact wording) are: Catchall Outbound: Apply Rule to message From users INSIDE the organization Blind carbon copy (BCC) the message to ARCHIVEACCOUNT Catchall Inbound: Apply Rule to messages Sent to users INSIDE the organization Blind carbon copy (BCC) the message to ARCHIVEACCOUNT
October 7th, 2009 8:36pm

Hi,works this CatchAll-Agent only on an Edge-Server?Does that Agent only redirect messages been sent to users that doesn't exist?Best regardsMarkus
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December 14th, 2009 2:17pm

Hi,does that Agent recognize Distributiongroups and Contacts as known or does the Agent not work with D-Groups and Contacts?
December 21st, 2009 12:22pm

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