POPBeamer for Microsoft Exchange

• POPBeamer is an Inbound POP3 Router for Microsoft Exchange 
• POPBeamer collects messages from an unlimited number of POP3 accounts and routes it to your Exchange Server
• POPBeamer works with every version of Exchange Server including Small Business Server
• POPBeamer works with every ISP's POP3 server, even the older ones, that do not support the Received for header line
• POPBeamer supports Dial-Up connections to the Internet and runs independent from your Exchange Server
• POPBeamer supports automatic routing of messages and can be used to share one POP3 mailbox for a whole company

• With POPBeamer you do not need a static IP address, because it works with dynamic IP addresses
• With POPBeamer you do not need to configure ETRN and DNS which Exchange Server normally requires

Contents

• System Requirements
• How does it work

• Licensing Agreement
• History

• Installation
• POPBeamer as a Microsoft NT Service
• How to stop POPBeamer
• Upgrade to the latest Version

• Common Problems
• Helper Programs
• Additional information for using a Proxy Server
• Complete description of all options in MBAdmin

System Requirements

• Windows NT 3.51 or 4.0 or Windows 95/98 with TCP/IP installed
• Microsoft Exchange Server

How does it work

• At scheduled intervals POPBeamer scans your POP3 mailbox for new messages and downloads the messages
• Depending on the settings of Auto Detect the following will happened

• If Auto Detect is enabled

• POPBeamer scans the message for valid email addresses depending on the setting in MBAdmin
• All email addresses are compared again the Exchange Server addresses and if a recipient resides on the Exchange Server, the message will be sent to her/him.
• If there is a problem with a message that POPBeamer can not handle, the messages sent the person who is responsible for POPBeamer, so that no message is lost.

• If Auto Detect is disabled

The messages is sent to the Exchange Server using the given email address

 

Installation

• Create a directory on your machine and copy all the files into this directory.
  Start MBAdmin.exe to configure POPBeamer.

• On your first start you will prompted for the following information:

• Postmaster's Address

The address of the person who is responsible for maintaining POPBeamer. POPBeamer will send all error messages and undeliverable messages to this address.

• Send Messages To Host

The name or IP address of the Exchange Server.
If POPBeamer is running on the same machine as the Exchange Server than you can use localhost as the name

• If you are using a Dial-Up connection to the Internet then switch to the Dial-Up tab and enable it

  
  If POPBeamer is running on a Small Business Server then you don't need to enable Dial-Up.
  By default, the Winsock Proxy Client is installed on a Small Business Server and so POPBeamer will use it.
  As a result the proxy server will dial out and there will be no conflict in using the Dial-Up.

  
  

• For every POP3 mailbox that POPBeamer should scan, you need to create a routing in File -> New Inbound POP3

POPBeamer needs to know the mailbox, the password and the server ( host ) where the mailbox resides.
POPBeamer also needs the to know to which Email address the message(es) should be forwarded.
If you select Auto Detect , POPBeamer will try to figure out the recipient from the SMTP header of the message.

Note: In the case POPBeamer can not find a valid recipient in the SMTP header it will forward the message to postmaster

By default POPBeamer scans the POP3 mailbox every 15 minutes for new messages unless you change the schedule.

• If you use Auto Detect and not the VRFY method, then you need to tell POPBeamer which recipients are on the Exchange Server.
  To do this select View -> Address Table and add all Exchange Server SMTP addresses.

Note: Enclosed you will find ExchImp.Exe which imports all addresses from the Exchange Server so that you don't need to type it manually.

Note: If you want to receive all mail for your whole company through one POP3 mailbox, then select Auto Detect in Inbound POP3 Routing and ask your ISP to set up a star POP3 mailbox, which means that all messages to your domain name should be routed to one POP3 mailbox.

 

POPBeamer as a Microsoft NT Service

Be sure that POPBeamer is running well in Console Mode ( i.e. starting from an icon ) and there is no error, because once you run it as a Service, you can't see a screen and a problem will only be visible in the log file.

In general, installing POPBeamer as a service should be your last task and not your first.

• Installing POPBeamer as a NT Service

Start MBServer.exe one time with an argument of install, by typing

MBServer install

at the Command Prompt and POPBeamer will create the service.

By default it's an AUTOSTART Service and any time your computer is started, POPBeamer will start.
You can start and stop POPBeamer at any time via Control Panel

You can start and stop POPBeamer at any time via Control Panel

Note: After you started POPBeamer as a Service, verify that POPBeamer has no errors. 
You need to take a look into the log file to do this.

• Removing POPBeamer as a NT Service

Start MBServer.exe one time with an argument of remove, by typing

MBServer remove

at the Command Prompt and POPBeamer will delete the service.

 

How to stop POPBeamer

• POPBeamer runs as a console application:

• Press ESCAPE
• Select Close from the system menu ( works only on NT )
• Press Alt-F4 ( works only on NT )

• POPBeamer runs as a service on NT:

• Open Control Panel, select Services, locate POPBeamer and press the button labeled Stop
• type net stop POPBeamer at the Command Prompt

 

Upgrade to the latest Version

To upgrade your current version of POPBeamer

• stop MBServer.exe and close MBAdmin.exe
• make a backup of your current MBServer.exe and MBAdmin.exe
• extract MBServer.exe and MBAdmin.exe from the zip file and copy it into your POPBeamer directory
• Restart MBServer.exe

Helper Programs

• Signal

Signal is a command line program that let's you perform the same commands as from the Signal menu of MBAdmin.
So you can force the download of POP3 messages with the simple click to a link rather than starting MBAdmin.
Signal.zip can be downloaded from http://www.popbeamer.com/download.htm

 

• LogView

LogView let's you view the logfile in real time from any machine on your network.
This is especially useful if MBServer runs as a service.
LogView.zip can be downloaded from http://www.popbeamer.com/download.htm

 

Common Problems

• POPBeamer downloads the messages from the ISP without any problem but they are not forwarded to the Exchange Server.
  The messages are all in the MSG-OUT directory and the log file shows Error: Unable to connect to host
  
  Make sure that your Exchange Server has Inbound SMTP enabled.
  In Exchange Admin select the Internet Mail Service ( IMS ) , select the tab Connections and make sure Inbound & Outbound is checked in the section Transfer Mode.

• Incoming messages are working but the Exchange Server does not send outgoing messages to the ISP

• Start the Exchange Adminstrator, open the Internet Mail Service ( IMS ), select the tab labeled Dial-Up Connections and select the DUN connection you want to use
• Switch to the tab labeled Connections, click on Forward all message to host and type in the name or IP address of the ISP's SMTP host
• Restart the IMS to activate the changes
  

 

• POPBeamer sends the message to the Exchange Server without any error,
  but the message seams to "disappear" and never reaches the mailbox of the recipient

Take a look in the Event Log if Exchange has reported an error. If you don't find an error, enable logging at the IMS.

The most common problems are:

• Recipient has a message size limit
• Recipient has a mailbox size limit
• Sender is using a charset which your Exchange can not handle;
  charset="x-user-defined" is common when sending from the Spanish version of Outlook Express
• Sender is using charset for Eastern Europe and RTF/TNEF is attached ( fixed in Exchange v5.5 SP1 )
  

• POPBeamer reports RAS problems when the Proxy Server opens the line

If you have a proxy server, then you should run POPBeamer over the proxy rather that use the built in dialup.
Information how to configure your proxy can be found at Additional information for using a Proxy Server

 

• POPBeamer reports RAS port is not available or Another application is using the port and you have a AVM FRITZ! card for ISDN running under NT

This is a problem of the driver of the FRITZ! card.
If you have a proxy server, then you should run POPBeamer over the proxy rather that use the built in dialup.
Information how to configure your proxy can be found at Additional information for using a Proxy Server

 

Licensing Agreement

This product and it's documentation may not, in whole or in part, be copied, reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any other natural or computer language, in any form or by any means whatsoever, be it electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, manual or otherwise, without the prior written consent of DataEnter. DataEnter makes no warranty or representation, either expressed or implied, with respect to the product POPBeamer and it's documentation, their quality, performance, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose. DataEnter reserves the right to revise the user's guide and make changes in the content without obligation to notify any person or organization of such a change. In no event will DataEnter be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages, real or imagined, resulting from the use or purchase of this software. Under no circumstances shall DataEnter's liability for damages exceed the price paid for the software license. Should any remedy hereunder be determined to have failed, all limitations of liability and exclusion of damages set forth above shall remain in full force and effect. The extent of the DataEnter's warranty for the software and it's documentation is limited to physical defects of the distribution media containing the software. Contact DataEnter to obtain return authorization for the replacement diskette within 30 days of the original date of purchase. Any further statement made by agents, employees, distributors or dealers of DataEnter do not constitute warranties and are not binding. No employee of DataEnter has the authority to modify any portion of this warranty. All brand and product names we refer to in the documentation are used solely for identification purposes and may be trademarks of other companies.

DataEnter, (the licensor) grants the buyer (the licensee) the right to use this copy of POPBeamer (the program) on a single computer at a single location servicing a single Exchange Server as long as the licensee complies with the terms of this license. The licensor reserves the right to terminate this license if the licensee violates any part of the agreement. The licensee agrees to make copies of the program only for backup purposes. The licensee agrees not to copy the documentation and to take all necessary precautions to ensure that the backup copies of the software are not distributed to or acquired by other parties.

Microsoft Exchange, Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows 98 are a trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

History

• Released

v3.01 98-07-07

• Fixed a problem when a POP3 server sends blanks before the result code
• Fixed deletion of temp files in POP3 sessions
• Changed MBAdmin so that deleted database records will not be reused
• Added SOCKS support
• Added wake up for dialup router

v3.02. 98-09-11

• Added support for discarding duplicated email in inbound POP3 routing based on identical message id
• Added a third digit for the thread number

v3.03 98-10-07

• Fixed a problem with finding duplicated message id's
• Fixed ExchImp display name for foreign characters

v3.04 98-10-31

• Added a check that only messages with more than one recipient are discarded
• Fixed ExchImp for users with more than one SMTP address
• Fixed deleting of temp file with duplicated message
  

v3.05 98-12-01

• Added support for Resent-To and Apparently-To in inbound POP3 with auto detect
• Added support to signal MBServer that it should immediately collect and send messages
  ( please read the section "Helper Programs" of the documentation for a complete description )
  

v3.06 99-01-07

• Changed the way a connect is done so that it does not take 5 minutes to find out that a host is not responding
• Added support for Delivered-To in inbound POP3 with auto detect
• Added a workaround for a configuration bug in some QPOP POP3 servers
• Added new option for email verification so that no imported address list is necessary
• Added new options for email address detection, depending how your ISP's host formats the message
• Added support for custom header fields
• Added dump of the message header
• Added a description how POPBeamer detects and verifies an email address
• Added displaying the FROM address
• Added warnings when the configuration is not in the way it should be
  

v3.07 99-01-30

• Added additional checking of the From address to make sure Exchange will accept it
• Added support for the Return-Path header field
• Added skipping of bad POP3 messages which are not downloadable
• Added support for using a specific received for line
  

v3.08 99-03-22

• Fixed receiving of null byte files
• Fixed downloading of corrupt messages