Recovering bounced email addresses

[Carol Grismore]

When an email "bounces", the information about the email address of the
addressee is buried in the return. Does anyone know an automatic way to
recover the addresses of the potential recipients, so that their emails can
be deleted from our mailing list?

 

[Tom Wickerath]

Hi Carol,

I don't know of an automated method of doing this, however, you might want
to wait before deleting a person's e-mail address based on a single rejected
message. A few years ago, when I was maintaining the membership list of the
Pacific NW Access Developer's Group (www.pnwadg.org), I would send out a
meeting notice each month to over 400 people. Often times, one or more
addresses would bounce. In some of those cases, the bounce was due to some
transient error. A second attempt to send to the same e-mail address would
sometimes go through without a problem. So, I'd base any decision on pruning
e-mail addresses on at least three bounced messages, spread over some time
period (ie. not all on the same day).


Tom Wickerath
Microsoft Access MVP
http://www.accessmvp.com/TWickerath/
http://www.access.qbuilt.com/html/expert_contributors.html
__________________________________________

 

[Carol Grismore]

That makes sense.

I can't prune anybody right now anyhow, as I can't figure out who has bounced!

Thanks!

 

[Tom Wickerath]

Hi Carol,

I assume that you are saying that you cannot figure out who has bounced
because you only have the bounced e-mail address available, and not the name
that goes with it? You could always search the e-mail field of the table used
to store e-mail addresses to find the applicable record.

You can concatenate the names and e-mail addresses together in a query, and
use the concatenated form when copying addresses from the query to paste into
the BCC field of a new message. That way, if the message bounces, you should
still see the concatenated form in the message header. This is exactly how I
used to do this several years ago, when I was maintaining the membership
database for the Pacific NW Access Developer's Group. Consider the following
SQL (Structured Query Language) statement, for a table named "tblMembers",
with fields that include "NameLast", "NameFirst", "NameMI", "EMail Address",
and BouncedMessage (a Yes/No data type used to mark a record as having an
e-mail address that bounces, without actually deleting this person from the
database:

SELECT [NameLast] & " " & [NameFirst] & " " & "<" & [EMail Address] & ">"
AS [Name Last, First & E-Mail Address]
FROM tblMembers
WHERE BouncedMessage=False
ORDER BY NameLast, NameFirst, NameMI;

To use this SQL statement, create a new query in your database. Dismiss the
Add Tables dialog without adding any tables. In query design view, click on
View > SQL View. You should see the word SELECT highlighted. Delete this
default keyword. Copy the SQL statement (Ctrl C) and paste it into the SQL
view (Ctrl V), replacing the SELECT keyword, after making the appropriate
substitutions for the field names and the name of the table in your database.
When you run the query, you should see records similar to this:

Grismore Carol <YourEmailAddress@domain>


Tom Wickerath
Microsoft Access MVP
http://www.accessmvp.com/TWickerath/
http://www.access.qbuilt.com/html/expert_contributors.html
__________________________________________

 

[Carol Grismore]

Nope -- too easy! The "bounced" emails (some 550 of them) have the email
address of the addressee in the body of the message only, and not in any
headers. So I would have to be able to read the body of the email and parse
out the address.
The other thing I could do in read the little "Delivery report.txt" note
that is attached to each of these bounced emails, but I believe it's on our
Exchange server and I don't have -- and can't get -- access to that, so
that's out.
--
Carol

Hi Carol,

I assume that you are saying that you cannot figure out who has bounced
because you only have the bounced e-mail address available, and not the name
that goes with it? You could always search the e-mail field of the table used
to store e-mail addresses to find the applicable record.

You can concatenate the names and e-mail addresses together in a query, and
use the concatenated form when copying addresses from the query to paste into
the BCC field of a new message. That way, if the message bounces, you should
still see the concatenated form in the message header. This is exactly how I
used to do this several years ago, when I was maintaining the membership
database for the Pacific NW Access Developer's Group. Consider the following
SQL (Structured Query Language) statement, for a table named "tblMembers",
with fields that include "NameLast", "NameFirst", "NameMI", "EMail Address",
and BouncedMessage (a Yes/No data type used to mark a record as having an
e-mail address that bounces, without actually deleting this person from the
database:

SELECT [NameLast] & " " & [NameFirst] & " " & "<" & [EMail Address] & ">"
AS [Name Last, First & E-Mail Address]
FROM tblMembers
WHERE BouncedMessage=False
ORDER BY NameLast, NameFirst, NameMI;

To use this SQL statement, create a new query in your database. Dismiss the
Add Tables dialog without adding any tables. In query design view, click on
View > SQL View. You should see the word SELECT highlighted. Delete this
default keyword. Copy the SQL statement (Ctrl C) and paste it into the SQL
view (Ctrl V), replacing the SELECT keyword, after making the appropriate
substitutions for the field names and the name of the table in your database.
When you run the query, you should see records similar to this:

Grismore Carol <YourEmailAddress@domain>


Tom Wickerath
Microsoft Access MVP
http://www.accessmvp.com/TWickerath/
http://www.access.qbuilt.com/html/expert_contributors.html
__________________________________________

That makes sense.

I can't prune anybody right now anyhow, as I can't figure out who has bounced!

Thanks!

 

[Tom Wickerath]

Hi Carol,

You have a couple of options:

1.) Purchase a single license for Total Access E-mailer from FMS (not cheap)
http://www.fmsinc.com/MicrosoftAccess/Email.asp

2.) Try using the Worldcast software
WorldCast is free for noncommercial use.
http://www.fairlogic.com/worldcast/index.shtml

3.) Send me a private e-mail message, with a valid reply address. I have an
application that I can share with you that will allow you to read the e-mail
addresses, as long as you are using Outlook (not Outlook Express or any other
e-mail client software). If you are interested in this third option, my
e-mail address is available at the bottom of the contributor's page shown in
my signature, below. Please do not post your e-mail address (or mine) to a
newsgroup reply. Doing so will only attract the unwanted attention of
spammers.


Tom Wickerath
Microsoft Access MVP
http://www.accessmvp.com/TWickerath/
http://www.access.qbuilt.com/html/expert_contributors.html
__________________________________________