Confused how this is even possible

Question asked by Rod Strumbel - 8/10/2026 at 2:53 PM

Answered

Have a customer sent an email...

It appears in the Message Archive.

It appears in the users Sent Items folder.

It appears in our gateway logs.

It DOES NOT appear in the SMTP logs anywhere. Searched by the sender and by the recipient.

How is this possible?

Discovered the problem while parsing the logs looking for a different set of data on a different issue. So literally simply stumbled over it when trying to true up some other data.

4 Replies

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Kyle Kerst Replied

8/10/2026 at 3:45 PM

Employee Post

What do the Delivery logs show for that message? From that session you should be able to step backwards into the SMTP logs using the session ID/timing revealed in the logs.

Kyle Kerst

Lead Internal Network/System Administrator

SmarterTools Inc.

smartertools.com

Andrew Barker Replied

8/10/2026 at 4:22 PM

Employee Post Marked As Answer

The SMTP logs are for inbound SMTP connections. For sending out over SMTP, you'd want to check the Delivery logs.

Andrew Barker
Lead Software Developer
SmarterTools Inc.
www.smartertools.com

Rod Strumbel Replied

8/11/2026 at 6:10 AM

I've been using this for over 10 years... and I am just now learning that??? Egads. Our delivery logs were set to Exceptions only. Have opened them up. Thanks guys. Feeling like an idiot.

Rod Strumbel Replied

8/11/2026 at 7:07 AM

So is it normal for the Delivery log to be dusted with errors indicating: Exception: rawText does not contain a valid rfc2822 header field

I see that over and over. If I remove from the spool that message, it is clean for awhile and then they start appearing again. It appears to be triggered when a message attempts to deliver to a non-existing address (or at least I can reproduce it that way).

Will those clear out of the spool on their own after some time? Or do I need to be monitoring for these regularly?

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