Mails disappearing

MailEnable's Connector for Microsoft Outlook provides a rich messaging and collaborative interface to MailEnable.
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Matth
Posts: 133
Joined: Fri Nov 08, 2002 8:34 am
Location: Hong Kong

Mails disappearing

Post by Matth »

At first I did not believe it from colleagues that said mails sent were not delivered. Just now I also had at least two cases where I sent EMails from Outlook and they simply never got delivered, but I have not received an error message or anything the like.

The first one was a reply to a new client request for information. I only realized it today when the client contacted me again asking if I have received his email. When I checked my sent mails, nothing to be found. The mail I had written as a reply is not there.

Then today I had two emails in my outbook folder and I watched how they got sent. One mail showed up in the Sent Items folder, the first one simply vanished into thin air.

I am currently not sure whether it's the Connector for Outlook or if it's a server problem, but this is simply unacceptable. And I need the Connector so that I have also the calendar integration.

I have been using Mailenable since the beginning of this millenium, but with the recent problems coming up I seriously consider dumping this.

digitron
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed May 02, 2018 3:22 pm

Re: Mails disappearing

Post by digitron »

I've had lot of such complaints with my users.
Try to log into webmail, and check if email exist there
If yes, then resync with server (and first check that Outlook didn't block open protocol add in). If that won't help, try to reinstall ME Connector. I've found that beta version is working much better than last stable release

Matth
Posts: 133
Joined: Fri Nov 08, 2002 8:34 am
Location: Hong Kong

Re: Mails disappearing

Post by Matth »

I do have checked with webmail, but they are not there. That's what puzzles me. And if I have to check every single time the webmail whether the mail is sent or not, then there's no point in using the product.

I will try the beta. But it's not really reassuring, that the beta should be more reliable than a released version.

MailEnable-Ian
Site Admin
Posts: 9738
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2004 4:44 am
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Re: Mails disappearing

Post by MailEnable-Ian »

Hi,

Navigate to the problematic mailbox within the MailEnable installation path on the server.

Example:

Mail Enable\Postoffices\(Postoffice name)\MAILROOT\(mailbox name)\(folder name)

Create an empty text file using Windows Notepad and save it as: _change.dty. Place that file in the folder with missing items and then login to the web mail client to see if all entries are then visible. The file _change.dty forces an index update. If the missing entries are then visible then this should also fix the Outlook Connector. Just ensure to issue a "reset from server" within the connector toolbar options.
Regards,

Ian Margarone
MailEnable Support

Matth
Posts: 133
Joined: Fri Nov 08, 2002 8:34 am
Location: Hong Kong

Re: Mails disappearing

Post by Matth »

I placed the _change.dty empty text file in the "Sent Items" folder. After login to webmail, at least one mail is still not showing.

But actually it wasn't the problem that the mail was not showing in webmail. It didn't get sent the first first place, although I saw it leaving the Outbox folder in Outlook.

So it seems that there are

- Mails disappearing into thin air and although being sent, they never reach their recipient, nor are the saved in the Sent Items folder
- Mails do get sent, but no copy is saved in the Sent Items folder

The second point is slightly better, but still far from what I expect from a mail server software.

MailEnable-Ian
Site Admin
Posts: 9738
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2004 4:44 am
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Re: Mails disappearing

Post by MailEnable-Ian »

Hi,
So it seems that there are

- Mails disappearing into thin air and although being sent, they never reach their recipient, nor are the saved in the Sent Items folder
You need to trace through the log files on the server. Search the SMTP log file first for the SMTP transaction of when the message was sent via the MAPI connector. Then trace from there using the message ID within the MTA agent log files to see if the message was routed to the SMTP outgoing queue. Here is an article to help you trace through the logs: https://www.mailenable.com/kb/content/article.asp?ID=me020252
- Mails do get sent, but no copy is saved in the Sent Items folder
This is most likely related to a custom SMTP command used by the MAPI Connector during the SMTP transaction to save messages to the sent items folder. This command is possibly being intercepted by an external firewall and being dropped. Enable MAPI client side logging (https://www.mailenable.com/kb/content/article.asp?ID=me020589) and then search the log file for the command MESAVETOSENT for more clues. The common workaround here is to configure the MailEnable SMTP service to listen on an additional non SMTP port (i.e: 2525). Then configure the MAPI Connector to connect to SMTP via that port. This should prevent any firewall from dropping the command.
Regards,

Ian Margarone
MailEnable Support

Matth
Posts: 133
Joined: Fri Nov 08, 2002 8:34 am
Location: Hong Kong

Re: Mails disappearing

Post by Matth »

I'll keep that in mind for the next time. A month later it's a bit tricky to find that one message in the large logs.

And I doubt that there's a firewall issue or something the like. There was no change in configuration before and after, it was just that few items that seem to get lost. A firewall would block things consistently, and not just randomly, no?

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