Tracing Emails that 'Never Arrived' with Outlook/Exchange 2003

If someone claims they never got an email, what can I do track it from the point of Exchange through their mailbox. There is the message tracking center on the Exchange 2003 server, how much does that tell me (what are its limits)?

Also, is there anything on the Desktop for Outlook 2003 that will log if the email ever came in? So I can see if it was deleted?

Are there any Exchange features that can be enable to provide more detailed logging?

Solution 1:

Message tracking will tell you about emails that successfully arrived on your exchange server. Enabling logging on your SMTP virtual server will show the SMTP 'conversations' between sending mail servers and your exchange server.

For example if you were expecting an email from [email protected] but he mis-spelled your address as [email protected] you would see this in the SMTP log.

Logging the SMTP service

Solution 2:

Make sure to enable Deleted Items Retention on your Exchange server. That will allow you to look at what the person has deleted in the last X days, with X being a number that you choose. Also, make sure to carefully check their spam folder in Outlook, as it isn't unusual for messages to be directed there. It's also possible to do a brick-level backup to look at nightly snapshots of the messages in a user's mailbox. Note that brick-level backups in Exchange 2003 will significantly slow down your backup time.