To check if an e-mail id is currently active

[psruthishali]

I am building a database in which I have field containing mail-ids. When I am entering a new mail-id to the database through the forms, I want my form to check if it is an existing and active e-mail id. If it is active, then only I should allow the user to enter the e-mail id. Otherwise, I should prompt him saying this is not an active e-mail id. Is there any way to do this?

[stanl]

If you are performing the lookup within Outlook check out the ActiveInspector.CurrentItem

If you want to validate any given email address, it gets a little tricky - you can use nslookup to obtain the MX records for the domain, then activate a telnet session via port 25 to the mx record, send a fake email to the address you want to verify and look for a response. This is difficult to script and there are various timeout issues.

Of course, if you are only looking to validate the syntax of the address there are posts and code on this forum for that (use the search tool).