I too get this message on occasion! Most mail flows prpperly, but I do have a couple that do not and when I check the properties I see the SMTP error message. I can send a message from a yahoo account without a problem. I think in my case it may be related to our ISA server and our cisco firewall. We have 2 messaging systems, Exchange 2000 and Lotus Notes 4.6 (used only for colaberative databases, but still is able to send e-mail updates). As both have to listen on port 25, we have mail forwarding setup, which sometimes causes problems.