Introducing Message Analyzer, an SMTP header analysis tool in Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer
Published May 01 2013 02:40 PM 110K Views

Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a web-based tool that provides administrators and end users with the ability to run connectivity diagnostics for our servers to test common issues with Microsoft Exchange, Lync and Office 365. The tool started as Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer, and based on your feedback we've continued to add functionality to test connectivity with Lync and Office 365, and made other enhancements such as tests for Outlook Anywhere, Exchange Web Services, outbound SMTP, Office 365 Single Sign-On test, support for 10 additional languages and an improved captcha experience.

We're excited to announce Message Analyzer, a brand new addition to the Remote Connectivity Analyzer. Message Analyzer makes reading email headers less painful.

Screenshot: Message Analyzer tab
Figure 1: The new Message Analyzer tab in RCA

SMTP message headers contain a wealth of information which allows you to determine the origins of a message and how it made its way through one or more SMTP servers to its destination. To use Message Analyzer, all you need to do is copy message headers from a message and paste them in the Message Analyzer tab on the RCA web site.

Screenshot 2: Paste message headers in Message Analyzer
Figure 2: Paste message headers in the Message Analyzer

Trying to locate message headers in Outlook 2010 and later? See Hey Outlook 2010, where are my message headers?

Features of the Message Analyzer

Here's a quick look at what you can do with Message Analyzer.

  • View the most important properties and total delivery time at a quick glance.

    Screenshot 3: Message Analyzer tab
    Figure 3: View the most important header properties and delivery time

  • Analyze the received headers and displays the longest delays quickly for easy discovery of sources of message transfer delays.

    Screenshot 4: View where longest message transfer delays occurrd
    Figure 4: Quickly detect where the longest message transfer delays occurred

  • Sort all headers by header name or value.

    Screenshot 5: Sort message headers
    Figure 5: Sort message headers

  • Quickly collapse the sections that you don’t need.

  • All processing is done in your browser, and no private information is shared with Microsoft.

  • Useful for any header, whether generated by Exchange, Office 365, or any other RFC standard SMTP server or agent.

Note, we consider this feature to be in beta for the moment. Please send us feedback and we’ll continue to make improvements.

Check out this update to the RCA at testconnectivity.microsoft.com (short URL: aka.ms/rca).

Stephen Griffin & Scott Landry
On behalf of the entire MCA/RCA team
Follow the team on Twitter - @ExRCA

20 Comments
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Very cool. I'm sure it will prove very useful.

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Hey. You guys have a copy editor position open?

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Thank ;) Great tool for us Exchange On-Premises Customers

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@John: See typos?

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Very nice, it will remove efforts of exchange admin to calculate time conversion in header message for delays email

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Awesome! Would be nice to have a stand-alone EXE too into which I can paste the header to display all that data.

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Nice! But make the results box a whole lot larger to make it actually usable for analysis. Simply displaying it in full would be best.

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Great handy tool added within RCA. Nice!

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Very handy. We have to prove to users where the delays are a lot.

I would agree about the size of the analysis box though.

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Very nice. I must agree with Roady to make results box larger.

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Awesome Tool. Now we don't need to use mx tool box to analyse email headers.

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Agree'd the box needs to be viewable full screen..

Very good handy little tool tho

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Nice tool, but re size should be possible. It's a pain to scroll through the results with just a few lines displayed.

As mentioned already, a copy tool or any other reasonable output option would be appreciated.

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A good start, but I'm calling this one for mxtoolbox.com still.

www.mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx

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Nice tool but how about talking the Outlook team into just making the message header window resizable so I don't have to copy and paste into Notepad all the time.

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Nice tool.

I have found a website thats resolves MX records:    www.elcorreoelectronico.com/.../mx-record

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I can't find where one would report typos in the software, so I'm telling you. In the Exchange admin center, click mail flow, click receive connector, then click the plus sign + to create a new receive connector. In the new receive connector dialog box, under Type, next to Internet, it says "For exmaple." [@John: there should be! ;) ]

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@Karla Marsh: Thanks for letting us know! This has been fixed in CU1 (or perhaps a later build).

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It's very nice and cool feature..Everything is one go now...

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This is great, but will it get to keep its name?  The next beta of network monitor is also called Message Analyzer.  I'm sure I will use both tools regularly!  

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‎Jul 01 2019 04:12 PM
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