Message Trace

Question

I recently submitted several message trace requests (checking if several external email address had been contacted within the previous 3 months). The reports were available to download a few days later - but when I tried I was presented with an access denied message. To my knowledge my account was setup with full admin rights.

2 weeks before submitting the request the 365 tenancy for my organisation was transferred to a new tenancy, with all mailboxes and contents being migrated to the new tenancy.

I've logged in again today to try and retrieve the reports that were available for downloading to find they are no longer visible.

Is there a way I can retrieve these reports (ignoring original permissions issue) without having to resubmit (mainly because of the date range of the original requests), and if they are still available how can I check whether my account has access to be able to retrieve them?

many thanks

Ian

Answer 1

Hi Ian,

Since your current active email address is company B's xxxxx.co.uk, which belongs to another Office 365 subscription. The subscriptions between xxxx.gov.uk and xxxxx.co.uk are different, they belong to 2 organizations. So when you run message trace within the xxxx.gov.uk, the external accounts can’t be set to receive notification emails. I have reproduced the issue, please see the error message below.

According to your situation, I suggest you run the message for your current active account(xxxxx.co.uk) within the new domain xxxxx.co.uk.

Best regards,

Rick

Answer 2

Hi Rick,

I ran the trace from the old tenancy (xxx.gov.uk - which is the account I'm logged into now). My logon for this tenancy has changed from my email address, to having to append the '.onmicrosoft.com' suffix, as my original email was migrated to the new tenancy as well (the pitfalls of having a working mailbox as an admin account I suppose!).

I've just submitted a new trace for someone else - when I entered the email address I would like it sent to as my active current email address, which sits in the new tenancy, I was told this was an invalid address to submit to, so have had to use this account with the .onmicrosoft.com suffix.

Hopefully I've explianed things a bit more clearly now!

I'l try and get hold of the Exchange admin that perfromed the tenancy migration as well - and see if there have been any permission changes on the old accounts, which may have occurred when they switched to needing the .onmicrosoft.com suffix to logon.

cheers

Ian

Answer 3

Hi Ian,

About your first question, I want to know where did you run the message trace, within the old tenant(xxxx.gov.uk) or the new tenant(company B's xxxxx.co.uk)? If you run the message trace within the new tenant, please check the report in the new tenant’s Exchange admin center. Also, I want to check whether the old tenant is still in use or has been expired? If you ran the message trace within the old tenant and it has been expired for 30 days, the content will be removed.

Second, according to your description, it seems that you download the report via the link in the notification email. You might run the message in the old tenant but send the notification email of the message trace result to your account, which has migrated to another tenant( migrate to company B's xxxxx.co.uk from xxxx.gov.uk ), so you don’t have the access to download the report. Another scenario is that the recipient of the result doesn’t have the admin access. Please check the permission of the recipient’s account.

I suggest you run the message again and then download the report using an admin account. Please make sure you run and download the message report within the same tenant.

If there is something I misunderstood you, please let me know the recipient’s domain, capture a screenshot of the permission, and provide a screenshot of the full error message.

Best regards,

Rick

Answer 4

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the reply.

The tenancies were for different organisations - so our xxxx.gov.uk tenancy migrated to company B's xxxxx.co.uk tenancy. So I think from your response I can't run the trace within the new tenancy, which is where the mailboxes I'm searching on have been migrated to?

I still have access to the old tenancy (xxxx.gov.uk0 via my old admin account, and ran the trace requests from here, for which I was notified of some reports being returned. I was unable to download these however, due to a permissions error. Upon trying again after the Christmas break i can't see the reports - so was wondering if these would have expired, and if so whether there would be a way to retrieve them? Am keen not to have lost the reports due to the date range of the trace requests. This would be my first priority- - the second being able to then download and open them !! :)

regards

Ian

Answer 5

Hi Ian,

About "2 weeks before submitting the request the 365 tenancy for my organization was transferred to a new tenancy", may I if your organization change to another tenant which is different old tenant?

If yes, we can't run message trace in the new tenant to trace the previous message which are in the old tenant.

If you only change another custom domain under the same tenant, you still can run the message trace.

Please let me know if you need any further help.

Thanks,

Richard