Return-Path is empty in Auto reply / out of office reply

Nur Hossain 282 Reputation points
2020-10-29T06:35:40.053+00:00

Need help with following

when Automatic reply/ Out of office reply send to external recipients, we can see that the return path is empty that the Email security appliance blocked the mail.
35905-image.png

Is there any way to add a return path?

Thank You
Nur

Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online Management
Microsoft Exchange Online: A Microsoft email and calendaring hosted service.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server: A family of Microsoft client/server messaging and collaboration software.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Andy David - MVP 142.3K Reputation points MVP
    2020-10-29T10:29:12.88+00:00

    No, that is by design. You will need to fix the email appliance. If its dropping those its doing it incorrectly. a null <> sender is perfectly legal .
    I would ask support for that appliance on how to work-around this.

    https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2298

    https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-c03261672

    Out of Office (OOF) Notification for remote users goes with blank sender and gets stuck in SmartHost or kind of products; Based on the research found With Exchange Server 2010 (and 2007's latest Service Pack) Microsoft has changed the behavior of automatic server based notifications, especially Out of Office (replies to rely on RFC 2298. As per RFC 2298 Message Disposition Notification (MDN) messages should be sent with a blank sender. The OOF reply messages are Message Disposition Notifications. This means that the HUB Server in the organization replaces the senders name with a blank one while transferring it to the internet.

    1 person found this answer helpful.

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  1. Lydia Zhou - MSFT 2,371 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2020-10-30T07:42:46.577+00:00

    @Nur Hossain

    Agree with AndyDavid. I checked the message header of OOF in my environment, it's the same result. Also, yes, this is by design and cannot be configured from Exchange server side.
    36273-600.png

    It's suggested to contact the vendor of the Email security appliance to see if any configuration can be set to accept these OOF messages.

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