Is there a way of sorting email in Exchange server that is collected via the POP3 connection manager (each email user has a POP3 account and this is collected and delivered into their exchange mailbox and subsequently read via Outlook or Outlook for Web) which is already tagged as SPAM in the subject line by the ISP so that the spam just gets passed into a 'junk' exchange user mailbox rather than the users'?

We have a couple of accidentally marked spam messages a week of interest so don't want the ISP to junk them without us monitoring it.

Exchange is version 6.5.7638.1 I don't know whether this is service pack 2 or what (it has the intelligent filtering though).

Ta for any help.

Had a quick look through the MS literature, and the official answer is 'no'.

The best workaround I can come up with is to create a message rule based on whatever wording the spam filter adds to the subject line, which forwards the message to a special spam user account. Trouble is, this can't be rolled-out centrally using the tools in Exchange server, although it could be emailed to each user, if you can trust them to do what you tell them. I gather there's third-party software that will manage a message rule roll-out, however...

HTH

Had a quick look through the MS literature, and the official answer is 'no'.

Thanks very much for that, I will see if I can find a suitable 3rd party tool. I keep finding that this MS server stuff is just frustrating in that it can't quite do things and it's always some other bit of software or odd registry hack to sort it out...

The question I would ask is why are you still using your ISPs servers to handle email.

For any company using exchange its far better to register your own domain name, and then use an MX record in dns to fire all the email through the corporate firewall straight into exchange. No need for any pop3 connectors and email delivery / reciept is instantaneous.

All you need do to stop spam then is pass the email through a decent spam filter like surfcontrol before it gets to the users mailbox, and surfcontrol will store the messages it thinks are spam so that you can release or delete them.

^ Good point, well made. Do it if you can!

The question I would ask is why are you still using your ISPs servers to handle email.

The reason is that if our Windows 2003 server (or the WAN router or office's ADSL line) goes down, we can still get to new email via the ISP's webmail service, or via Outlook/Thunderbird over POP3 from user's PCs from anywhere.

The ISP also have their own spamfilter and they can maintain that, thank you.

AFAIK you don't have these facilities when using SMTP delivery inplace of POP3.

So our decision was that it safer that way than having to totally rely on our server/WAN router/broadband for email and no need for purchase and maintenance of spamfilter software too (cheapskates aren't we!)

The only disadvantage of this is that filtering the Spam is done in the Outlook 2003 client (just look for 'SPAM' in the subject line), fine until you come to use Outlook for the Web if away from the office/PC/laptop. Hence the original question...

Ok,

You will still need to use a third party application. As I mentioned earlier we use surfcontrol to filter email and its very effective, preventing some 3000 spam messages per day being delivered to users mailboxes.

What I would do is, (assuming your pop3 connector passes to exhange via SMTP)

1) Disable the ISP spam filtering ( the mail filter will be for more affective than the isp solution)

2) install the 3rd part software (eg. surfcontrol) on another server.

3) configure the pop3 connector to pass all email to surfcontrol

4) configure surfcontrol to route the email into exchange.

We get very few if any false positives, and those that are can be released from surfcontrol and delivered as normal from a client frontend interface.