Scenario

I've created a distribution list in Exchange Server 2007/2010 for vendors to contact people in our sales department. But when someone from outside sends a message to the list the, individual users don't receive the message. The postmaster account gets the following delivery error:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists: [email protected] Your message wasn't delivered because of security policies. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.

At the beginning of the detailed diagnostic message it states:

#550 5.7.1 RESOLVER.RST.AuthRequired; authentication required ##.

Solution

You're using Exchange 2007 and the senders are vendors from outside your organization. By default, when you create a distribution list, the delivery is restricted to users that are authenticated.

When you use the distribution list inside your organization, it works fine because the users are authenticated -- but the outside vendors aren't. Here's what you can do to fix the problem:

• Go to the distribution list's Properties.
• Click on the Mail Flow Settings tab.
• Double-click Message Delivery Restrictions.
• Uncheck the box "Require that all senders are authenticated".

There's no need to restart the computer or any of the services. Your users in the distribution list should now be able to receive messages from outside vendors.