How to Disable Outbound Mail

  • Article

 

Using the Disable Outbound Mail option, you can disable outbound mail from all SMTP queues. For example, disabling outbound mail can be useful if a virus is active in your organization.

The Disable Outbound Mail option does not disable the MTA or system queues. System queues are default queues for each protocol that hold messages only while certain required routing tasks are performed, such as content conversion and address resolution. If you find messages in your system queues for extended periods, it means that one or more basic routing functions are failing somewhere in your Exchange organization. For more information about working with message accumulation in queues, see Using SMTP Queues to Troubleshoot Message Flow and Using X.400 (MTA) Queues to Troubleshoot Message Flow.

Procedure

To disable outbound mail

  • In Queue Viewer, click Disable Outbound Mail.

  • If you want to prevent outbound mail from a particular remote queue, instead of disabling all SMTP queues, you can freeze messages in a particular queue:

    • To freeze all the messages in a particular queue, in Queue Viewer, right-click the queue, and then click Freeze.

    • To unfreeze a queue, in Queue Viewer, right-click the queue, and then click Unfreeze.