Two Easy Ways to Troubleshoot Mail Flow Issues in Exchange 2010

Explore How to Troubleshoot Mail Flow Issues in Exchange 2010

This article will let users understand the mail flow issues in Exchange 2010. In addition, it covers all related to delivery problems of emails and how one can fix all these Microsoft Exchange mail flow issues.

Microsoft Exchange Server is one of the most important and critical applications used in many business organizations. It is basically used for email communication within or outside the organization. However, if there is an issue in the normal functioning of Exchange Server, it can stop the flow of communication within the organization.

It starts creating the issues regarding emails in MS Exchange Server 2010. Therefore, it is really important to restore the flow of email as soon as possible. Moreover, there are various methods available that a user can use to troubleshoot mail flow issues in Exchange 2010.

Most of the users keep on wondering whether the email has been sent or delivered successfully or not. As it is not at all easy for the Exchange Server Administrator to keep track of each and every single email. Therefore, to make whole this task easy for the users, Microsoft provides some online software such as Message Tracking Tool and Queue Viewer Tool. They all help in finding out the issues in Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Mail Flow Troubleshooter in Exchange 2010 - Getting Close to the Solution

As discussed in the previous section, Microsoft offers two main tools that an Exchange administrator can use to fix mail flow issues in Exchange 2010. Both of the tools are discussed below in detail:

Exchange Message Tracking Application

Microsoft Exchange Message Tracking software is one such tool that can be used by Exchange Server. This software makes it easy for the user to search for the logs of Server and act as a search engine for the Microsoft Exchange Server. It also finds out the whether the message is delivered or not if yes, then at what time. The software also permits users to diagnose the message delivery by following the steps mentioned below:

1. First of all, to use the MS Exchange Message Tracking tool, open EMC on the local machine and choose Toolbox container.
2. After that, choose Message tracking option from the Toolbox window.
3. As you select the Tracking option, Microsoft Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant window is displayed.
4. Now, you can use the parameters in Message Tracking option in order to search for the messages by using various attributes of messages like by sender name, time, subject, etc.

5. After choosing the desired parameter, the console will build an Exchange Management Shell command that you can use to do the tracking from the command line.
6. Then, click on the Next button to see all the email messages that matched with your selected attributes. The result totally based on the data extracted from logs of the server. It will uncover all the information based on the message even though the complete message is not opened.

7. It will display all information related to message is sent or went, but it will not allows you to correct any underlying the mail flow issue in MS Exchange Server.

Microsoft Queue Viewer Application

Another possible reason behind the mail flow issues in Exchange 2010 is the message in corrupt state blocking the queue of messages. Due to this, any other message sent after the corrupt message is not passed through the queue. To resolve this issue, Microsoft Queue Viewer Tool is used, which help users in troubleshooting Exchange 2010 mail flow. To know how to use queue viewer to troubleshoot mail flow issues in exchange server 2010, follow the steps listed below:

1. To begin, open EMC on the local machine and navigate to Toolbox container >> Queue Viewer option.
2. After this, one or multiple Mail Queues is displayed as you click on Queue Viewer.

3. Now, you can check all the columns of Queue Viewer to make sure which queue is exactly creating problem.
4. Next, to troubleshoot the mail flow issue, check the column of Last Error and Next Retry.
5. Here, message count also helps in locating the message, which is caught in the queue. This is helpful in displaying if server is having any performance issues but not able to handle workload.
6. This Queue Viewer does not display the status of the queue in real time, however, it refreshes periodically. You need to click on either Refresh button or wait for 30 seconds to verify the queue status.
7. If you think that mail flow issue in Exchange 2010 is due to a mail stuck in the queue, then double-click on the queue to open it. This will not only show all messages but errors also that is associated with each message.

8. If there is any mail with error, then delete that particular email and restart the flow of queue. However, if problem still exists, reboot the Exchange Server.

Conclusion

Troubleshooting mail flow issues in Exchange 2010 is necessary to be performed so that a user can make sure that all emails have been delivered successfully to the particular recipient. In order to analyze issues like this, we have provided two unique tools offered by Microsoft to solve the issue completely. If anyone has the same issue can easily any of the two tools without any hassle.