How to fix problem when incoming e-mail settings are not shown in Central Administration in Sharepoint

Incoming e-mail settings option in Central Administration allows you to configure Sharepoint to receive incoming emails and place them into document libraries. Configuration of the incoming emails is not simple and straightforward process and in most cases you will need to face with your environment’s specific problems. In general you need to do the following steps:

1. Configure MX DNS record for your domain, so emails will be processed by your mail server
2. Configure SMTP server
3. Configure Sharepoint to receive incoming emails in Central Administration > Operations > Incoming emails settings
4. Configure particular document library to allow incoming emails
5. Ensure that “Windows Sharepoint Services Incoming E-Mail” job in enabled in CA > Timer job definitions and that timer service is running.

I won’t provide detailed description of each step because it is described in many articles already. E.g. here you can find detailed instructions: How to configure Incoming Email Enabled Libraries in MOSS2007 RTM using Exchange 2007 in an Active Directory Domain.

When you perform step 3, i.e. configure incoming emails in Central Administration, you may face with the following problem: “Incoming e-mail settings” link is missing in the Operations > Topology and Services:

In order to fix it, close all browser windows and run browser as administrator:

Then type Central Administration URL manually in the address bar. After that you should see missing “Incoming e-mail settings” on the Operations tab:

It also should contain “Services on server” link, which was also missing when you ran CA as non-administrator. In most cases when you launch CA Windows should automatically ask you to run it as administrator. However in some cases it doesn’t happen and you may encounter with this problem.