Out-of-Office sent.. Out of Office

Some people like to have additional security around Out-Of-Office response e-mails. Those are the e-mails you automatically receive when you e-mail a person and they have set their Out-Of-Office in Outlook, or OWA (Exchange 2003 only).

Some companies (including Microsoft) make it corporate policy not to send these Out-Of-Office messages out of the company. I'm not exactly sure *why* you would want to do this, but I'm sure you have your own reasons.

Regardless, following KB Article 262352, I was able figure out a set of steps (mainly because they are provided) to disable this as this functionality is enabled by default on SBS 2003.

Here's how:

1. Open Server Management, then Advanced Management, First Organization (Exchange), Global Settings and click on Internet Message Formats


2. In the left-hand pane, right-click Default which is the * domain and choose Properties


3. On the Advanced Tab, un-select the Allow out of office responses

It seems confusing, but if you sit back and think about it, you're working primarily with the Internet Message Formats, and this is an Internet thing.

Oh, one last thing; Restart the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and the Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine services for the change to take affect.

Enjoy!
Sean