David said:
I sent out an email to myself and a few people in a BCC. One of the
BCC
addresses is repeatedly bouncing back as undeliverable. Each time it
bounces
back, Outlook automatically sends out the original email again to me
and all
the people who were BCC'd. I would like to stop Outlook from sending
out the
repeat messages. Thanks.
Outlook doesn't automatically send out any e-mails unless you defined a
rule to do so. Also, when you get the bounceback message, just how does
it possibly contain the list of recipients that were in the BCC field?
The recipient never gets that BCC field. The BCC field is just that, a
field presented in your e-mail program. There is no BCC header added to
the outbound e-mail. The To, Cc, and Bcc fields (in your application)
are NOT used to identify the recipients of your e-mail. The e-mail
client aggregates this list of recipients from the To, Cc, and Bcc
fields (in your application) and sends a RCPT-TO command for each
followed by the DATA command for the content of your message (which
includes all those headers which are just part of the message).
None of the recipients can see who else received your e-mail based on
the list of recipients that were specified in the RCPT-TO commands that
you sent to your own mail server. All they can see is the To and CC
headers that your e-mail client added in the *data* of your message sent
in the DATA command to your mail server. However, since your e-mail
client does not include the Bcc field as a Bcc header in the data of
your message, the recipients won't see a Bcc header to know to whom else
your mail was sent. So it is your configuration of Outlook that is
somehow sending out a *new* mail to all the recipients that you had
included in the Bcc field within your application (Outlook).
The receiving mail server bounces back an NDR (non-delivery report) to
you using the return-path headers because you sent your mail to an
invalid account. So why can't you manage to update your list of
recipients to correct that e-mail address or remove it? Obviously the
standard procedure is to send an NDR back to the sender if their mail is
undeliverable (actually it is better to have the receiving mail server
reject the mail *during* the mail session with the sending mail server
so the sending mail server is the one sending the sender the NDR since
sending a *new* mail as the NDR after the mail session is over relies on
the return-path headers which are bogus for spam mails and can slam an
innocent with a ton of NDRs for spam that they never sent).
If Outlook is automatically sending out mails, it is because you
configured it to do so, so don't configure it that way. Fact is, I
don't recall that Outlook has an automatic resend feature. You can
resend a mail but it is a manual process (open the previously sent mail
item and use the Resend function). A rule wouldn't work because the
list of recipients in the Bcc header would be unknown to the receiving
mail server since there is no Bcc header to look at so your rule
couldn't use a list of recipients because the NDR won't have them. If
the NDR is being generated by your own mail server (because of a reject
during its mail session with the receiving mail server) then maybe the
list of all recipients might be available in that NDR mail, but you
would still have be using a rule or some add-on to look for that list of
recipients and then resend to them. Maybe you are using some add-in to
resend your mails. Something you have done in Outlook is using
something from the NDR to identify to which item in your Sent Items
folder that matches up with the NDR and then resends that previously
sent item. That's not an Outlook feature.
Recipients listed in the Bcc are unknown to each recipient because there
is no Bcc header showing the list of recipients. The recipients don't
get to see who all was listed in the RCPT-TO commands that your e-mail
client sent to your mail server. So there is no way for recipients to
know to whom you sent you message when you used the Bcc field within
your e-mail application (Outlook). If the receiving mail server is
accepting your mail and then later sends a *new* mail back at you as the
NDR (a very bad and stupid practice), it doesn't know who were listed as
the Bcc recipients, either. If the receiving mail server rejects the
mail from your sending mail server DURING the mail session between them,
it is YOUR mail server that is putting the NDR message into your
mailbox. Since your sending mail server knows the list of recipients
that were specified in the RCPT-TO commands that you sent to it, only it
would know who was listed in the To, Cc, and Bcc fields (that were
aggregated into the list of RCPT-TO commands that it got) and could
resend that message. So maybe your mail server is performing a resend
function but is doing so when it receives an NDR rejection during a mail
session - but that would be a very stupid setup.
A mail server shouldn't be bouncing out (resending) the mail that it is
trying to send when it happens to get an NDR from a receiving mail
server. As for Outlook, well, if anything is automated within it then
you installed something, defined a rule (although I can't see how that
would work to match an NDR to a sent item), or did something to it that
isn't part of Outlook as it is distributed to make it do that
automation. How would Outlook know which item in Sent Items matched up
with the one that caused you to get back an NDR? The NDR cannot list
all the recipients because it never got that full list. The NDR may
include an attachment of the original mail but not always. It may give
a few lines of the original mail but that may not be unique enough to
match against an item in your Sent Items folder. Resending mails based
on receiving NDRs is not a function available within Outlook but it
might be something your mail server does (I'm not familiar with how
bulk/junk/spam mailers might work regarding failed delivery).
