Configuring the IIS Drop Folder Permissions for SharePoint Timer Service

We recently ran into an issue where the Timer Service in SharePoint was complaining incessantly about Event 6872, SharePoint Foundation.

A critical error occurred while processing the incoming e-mail file c:inetpubmailrootdrop4dd4690601cd288b00000005.eml. The error was: Access to the path ‘4dd4690601cd288b00000005.eml’ is denied..

To resolve this, you can simply go into the SMTP service (Control Panel –> Administrative Tools –> IIS 6.0 Manager) and under the domains, choose and view the properties of your primary server name (do not choice any alias’).

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Always choose you local server – not an alias.

Next, you will need to make note of the IIS drop folder on you local server.

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The drop folder location revealed!

Open a windows explorer window to that folder above (C:inetpubmailrootDrop) and set the permissions on the folder to allow your farm account to gain FULL read/write access.

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Open the properties on your Drop folder.

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Give Allow access to everything for your SharePoint Timer service (typically the Farm) account.

The reason we’re using the farm account is because that’s normally what your SharePoint Timer Service is running as.  If it’s going to be running/is running as another account, setup the above permissions for that account instead.

You should find that the next time your timer service kicks off, your eml files are all sucked into SharePoint, and you will no longer see that error message.

More about this can be found at this at the following technet article. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff453924.aspx

2 responses to “Configuring the IIS Drop Folder Permissions for SharePoint Timer Service

    1. Possibly, but just modify on a directory doesn’t always grant you the right to create folders. This process can create folders as well, so without that permission, you may run into additional trouble. You’re right, it may be more than necessary, but you’d want to make sure you grant enough to allow the process to do everything it’s required to do.

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