[AccessD] Outlook 2003

Stuart McLachlan stuart at lexacorp.com.pg
Sat Dec 3 17:58:05 CST 2005


On 3 Dec 2005 at 11:16, Stuart Sanders wrote:

> 
> Turns out (and I haven't investigated this to confirm it) the client was 
> using Outlook 2003.  Apparently the latest version doesn't generate 
> messageid headers which is and has been a core part of the internet email 
> standard defined by RFC 2822 for years.
> 

MS do get lots of things wrong with with email and are far from standards 
compliant in all sorts of ways, but this time they are not completely at  
fault.

RFC 2822 only says 
<quote>
   Though optional, every message SHOULD have a "Message-ID:" field.
</quote>

Note that SHOULD and MUST have very specific meanings within RFCs.


> message. The reason my server keeps rejecting messages is it expects a 
> Message-ID header and isn't finding one. Outlook 2003, it seems, isn't 
> generating one. 
> 
> I can't say this shocked me. Message-ID headers have been part of the IETF's 
> e-mail specification forever. Every other e-mail client on the planet 
> generates a Message-ID header. The Message-ID header is used by filters like 
> SpamAssassin and others to calculate the likelihood of a message being spam. 
> And lastly, many servers (like mine) will just outright refuse to accept 
> messages without a message-ID in the header."
> 
In that case the admin who set up the server should be shot. A MessageID is 
NOT a requirement header.

RFC 2822:
<quote>
   The only required header fields are the origination date field and
   the originator address field(s).  All other header fields are
   syntactically optional. 
</quote>

-- 
The Other Stuart




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