E-mails with large file attachments being bounced

[Labone]

We are running Exchange 2000 and we have set up the default message size that users can send/receive as 2048kb and 5120kb respectively.
Certain users need to receive larger e-mails so we have specified this override size in their AD User record - Send and receive limits are both set to 10MB. We have recently had the situation where two of these users are being sent e-mails with CAD (.dwg) files attached which have been zipped. The size of these e-mails are still between 2 - 6 MB so fairly sizeable but within the 10MB limit set on the AD user record. Both mailboxes have plenty of space for delivery but the senders are receiving DSN (Failures)stating the following:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

jbloggs@company.co.uk

The .txt file attached to this DSN contains the following:

Final-Recipient: rfc822;jbloggs@company.co.uk
Action: failed
Status: 5.2.3
X-Display-Name: Bloggs, Joe

I have looked up status 5.2.3 in the 'Enhanced status codes for delivery' tables on the Microsoft pages and the explanation is:

X.2.3 Message length exceeds administrative limit

I know that this is not the case, but can't find any more information on this. Is there anything else I need to do within Exchange or AD to set these send/receive limits? Or has anyone had a similar problme and could offer a solution?
Thanks.

 

[Peping]

Chances are the intended recepient's email account has file limitations too (say 2MB max).

Peping

 

[chisholm]

Try this set your send Limits to 10MB but set your receive limits 30% - 40% higher.

Here is what happened to us;

Environment: E2K SP3 - W2K SP3 - Outlook 98
Limits 6.5MB Send and 6.5 Receive (Exchange Limits) & 6.5MB (Mail Relay Limits)

We had a user send a 6MB ZIP File to an external recipient since it was under the 6.5MB Limit Exchange allowed it and when it was MIME Encoded the size jumped to 8MB, over the limits and it was rejected by the Mail Relay. However since the Receive Limits were also set at 6.5MB they never received the NDR, and the message seemed to go into never never land. Once we raised the receive limits to 10MB they at least were notified that the message was blocked.

***************************************
What I would suggest is the following, set your Send Limits to 10MB like you have done and increase the receive limits to 13MB or 14MB.

Hope this helps...

Chris Chisholm
Exchange Administrator

 

[chisholm]

One thing I forgot to ask is who is the NDR Coming from???

Your System or the Recipients System???

Chris Chisholm
Exchange Administrator

 

[Labone]

Hi Chris,
THe message was coming from the recipients system, but we have now solved the problem.
We mistakenly assumed that a send limit set in the Global Exchange properties could be overridden by the send limit on the Exchange properties of the individual mailbox. We now know that this is only true if the individual limit is smaller than the global limit. If the individual limit is larger,then the Global limit still applies.
Hence we had this:
Global limit = 2MB
Virtual SMTP limit = 10MB
Individual mailbox limit = 10MB
In this scenario, all users were restricted to 2MB regardless of their individual settings.

Now we have:
Global limit = 10MB
Virtual SMTP limit = 10MB
Some individual mailbox limits = 10MB, some 2MB

Therefore the users who need to send large files can now do so, and everyone else is restricted to 2MB.

This Microsoft KB article explains it all:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;322679&Product=exch2k

There is a greater overhead on administration this way, but it seems to be the only way to do it if you want different users to have different limits.
Unless anyone know another way.......!?!
Thanks to everyone who replied.
Cheers
Penny