Attachment corruption from Exchange 2003   

The Exchange 2003 server in our Atlanta office is corrupting attachments for 
outgoing mail to external recipients. The attachments are PDF, Excel and 
Word files for the most part. The errors that the recipient gets varies 
according to the file type. PDFs come through as "corrupt", Excel files 
usually give an "access denied" error. Word documents will do the same, but 
will also sometimes never open at all, and just sit there spinning forever 
in the Save or Open dialog. The corruption appears to be random and doesn't 
always occur, and sometimes a sender can re-send the same attachment and it 
will go through fine on the second or third try. This only happens to 
attachments sent outside of our organization to external recipients. 
Internal recipients in our other offices get attachments from Atlanta with 
no problem - with one exception. Our Chicago office gets winmail.dat files 
in place of the regular attachments. I believe that winmail.dat is how 
Outlook wraps up RTF messages, and only non-Outlook users should see this. 
Our Chicago office is using Outlook exclusively, so they shouldn't see the 
winmail.dat files at all. The Chicago server is the only one where this 
happens, and this is the only server in our org that is still running 
Exchange 2000. The rest are all running 2003.

I've tried blowing out and rebuilding the virtual directories in IIS on the 
Atlanta box, thinking that the permissions got hosed up, but this didn't 
help. We also thought that our Trend anti-virus for Exchange was causing the 
corruption, but we actually turned this off for a few days and this had no 
effect on the problem. I'm about to roll out a GPO for Outlook forcing HTML 
format for all users in the Atlanta office, just to see if this is limited 
to RTF formatted emails.

Any ideas?

date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:35:25 -0500   author:   Keith W

Re: Attachment corruption from Exchange 2003   

Are you relaying off a filtering device locally or Smarthosting on your 
Atlanta Server?  Seems to me if this is just happening with External 
recipients then the corruption could be occurring after the mails leave 
Exchange.

-- 
John Oliver, Jr
MCSE, MCT, CCNA
Exchange MVP 2008
Microsoft Certified Partner


"Keith W"  wrote in message 
news:156D4836-545A-4D4E-8847-9203B707DE4E@microsoft.com...
> The Exchange 2003 server in our Atlanta office is corrupting attachments 
> for outgoing mail to external recipients. The attachments are PDF, Excel 
> and Word files for the most part. The errors that the recipient gets 
> varies according to the file type. PDFs come through as "corrupt", Excel 
> files usually give an "access denied" error. Word documents will do the 
> same, but will also sometimes never open at all, and just sit there 
> spinning forever in the Save or Open dialog. The corruption appears to be 
> random and doesn't always occur, and sometimes a sender can re-send the 
> same attachment and it will go through fine on the second or third try. 
> This only happens to attachments sent outside of our organization to 
> external recipients. Internal recipients in our other offices get 
> attachments from Atlanta with no problem - with one exception. Our Chicago 
> office gets winmail.dat files in place of the regular attachments. I 
> believe that winmail.dat is how Outlook wraps up RTF messages, and only 
> non-Outlook users should see this. Our Chicago office is using Outlook 
> exclusively, so they shouldn't see the winmail.dat files at all. The 
> Chicago server is the only one where this happens, and this is the only 
> server in our org that is still running Exchange 2000. The rest are all 
> running 2003.
>
> I've tried blowing out and rebuilding the virtual directories in IIS on 
> the Atlanta box, thinking that the permissions got hosed up, but this 
> didn't help. We also thought that our Trend anti-virus for Exchange was 
> causing the corruption, but we actually turned this off for a few days and 
> this had no effect on the problem. I'm about to roll out a GPO for Outlook 
> forcing HTML format for all users in the Atlanta office, just to see if 
> this is limited to RTF formatted emails.
>
> Any ideas?

date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:42:25 -0500   author:   John Oliver, Jr. [MVP]

Re: Attachment corruption from Exchange 2003   

All mail comes and goes directly through the Exchange server. The only
filtering that occurs for outgoing mail is through our Trend ScanMail AV. I
turned this off for about a week and it didn't affect the problem, and
attachments were still being corrupted. If it weren't for the issue of our
internal Chicago office seeing winmail.dat attachments in Outlook when
receiving from the Atlanta server I would rule out Exchange and start
looking elsewhere for the problem. I'm pushing out the GPO blocking RTF
messages this morning to see if the problem is limited to RTF formatted
messages.

"John Oliver, Jr. [MVP]"  wrote in message 
news:uBlNxw8MIHA.4684@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Are you relaying off a filtering device locally or Smarthosting on your 
> Atlanta Server?  Seems to me if this is just happening with External 
> recipients then the corruption could be occurring after the mails leave 
> Exchange.
>
> -- 
> John Oliver, Jr
> MCSE, MCT, CCNA
> Exchange MVP 2008
> Microsoft Certified Partner
>
>
> "Keith W"  wrote in message 
> news:156D4836-545A-4D4E-8847-9203B707DE4E@microsoft.com...
>> The Exchange 2003 server in our Atlanta office is corrupting attachments 
>> for outgoing mail to external recipients. The attachments are PDF, Excel 
>> and Word files for the most part. The errors that the recipient gets 
>> varies according to the file type. PDFs come through as "corrupt", Excel 
>> files usually give an "access denied" error. Word documents will do the 
>> same, but will also sometimes never open at all, and just sit there 
>> spinning forever in the Save or Open dialog. The corruption appears to be 
>> random and doesn't always occur, and sometimes a sender can re-send the 
>> same attachment and it will go through fine on the second or third try. 
>> This only happens to attachments sent outside of our organization to 
>> external recipients. Internal recipients in our other offices get 
>> attachments from Atlanta with no problem - with one exception. Our 
>> Chicago office gets winmail.dat files in place of the regular 
>> attachments. I believe that winmail.dat is how Outlook wraps up RTF 
>> messages, and only non-Outlook users should see this. Our Chicago office 
>> is using Outlook exclusively, so they shouldn't see the winmail.dat files 
>> at all. The Chicago server is the only one where this happens, and this 
>> is the only server in our org that is still running Exchange 2000. The 
>> rest are all running 2003.
>>
>> I've tried blowing out and rebuilding the virtual directories in IIS on 
>> the Atlanta box, thinking that the permissions got hosed up, but this 
>> didn't help. We also thought that our Trend anti-virus for Exchange was 
>> causing the corruption, but we actually turned this off for a few days 
>> and this had no effect on the problem. I'm about to roll out a GPO for 
>> Outlook forcing HTML format for all users in the Atlanta office, just to 
>> see if this is limited to RTF formatted emails.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
>

date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 08:11:54 -0500   author:   Keith W