Too many recipients ???

[Glenn]

I've recently begun having a problem with Outlook XP. When I try to send an
email to a number of recipients, I'm getting a message from the "System
Administrator" with "Undeliverable" in the Subject line. It seems as though
this an Outlook message and is sent before it is actually sent. The
following winds up in the body of this message:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject:
Sent:

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

Then the email addresses are listed with the following underneath each one:

452 4.5.3 Too many recipients


Can someone please help resolve this?

Thanks,
Glenn

 

[Brian Tillman]

I've recently begun having a problem with Outlook XP. When I try to
send an email to a number of recipients, I'm getting a message from
the "System Administrator" with "Undeliverable" in the Subject line.

Outlook is not doing that, your ISP is. Outlook doesn't limit the number of
recipients.

 

[Vanguard]

I've recently begun having a problem with Outlook XP. When I try to
send an email to a number of recipients, I'm getting a message from
the "System Administrator" with "Undeliverable" in the Subject line.
It seems as though this an Outlook message and is sent before it is
actually sent. The following winds up in the body of this message:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject:
Sent:

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

Then the email addresses are listed with the following underneath each
one:

452 4.5.3 Too many recipients

"To a number of recipients." Uh huh, like HOW many? This isn't for
personal e-mails, is it? This if for bulk mailings. You are using a
*personal* account in trying to spew out hundreds of e-mails. Contact
whomever is your e-mail provider and ask them what are their anti-spam
quotas. The maximum number of recipients per message is one anti-spam
measure employed by most "personal" e-mail providers, often limiting a
message to a maximum of 20, 30, or 50 recipients. Another is the
maximum number of mail sessions per minute. They may employ a maximum
bandwidth per day quota, too.

 

[Glenn]

This is for personal email. It's for approx. 30-40 recipients. I'll call my
ISP at some point today and see if they can provide an answer. Thanks for a
point in the right direction.

Glenn

 

[Jeff Stephenson [MSFT]]

"To a number of recipients." Uh huh, like HOW many? This isn't for
personal e-mails, is it? This if for bulk mailings. You are using a
*personal* account in trying to spew out hundreds of e-mails. Contact
whomever is your e-mail provider and ask them what are their anti-spam
quotas. The maximum number of recipients per message is one anti-spam
measure employed by most "personal" e-mail providers, often limiting a
message to a maximum of 20, 30, or 50 recipients. Another is the
maximum number of mail sessions per minute. They may employ a maximum
bandwidth per day quota, too.

I wouldn't jump to unfair conclusions - I've seen ISPs limiting folks to as
few as 5 recipients per message, which is pretty unreasonable. And even a
limit of 20 recipients can easily be legitimately hit in personal use.

 

[Peter D]

Why is it that when people ask a legit question some people jump to all
sorts of conclusions and go Net-Copping?

ISPs routinely limit the number of recipients in an e-mail. That's what's
happening. It happens to me (limit 99, but I send out a weekly community
newsletter to 500+ people). Lots of people have legitimate reasons to e-mail
lots of people -- some people have lots more friends than you is all.

For the original poster: Ask your ISP what's the limit. Or try sending to 10
people and add 5 more to the second one and so on until you find the limit.
After that, create GroupA, GroupB, etc. each one the max limit.
Alternatively, get yourself a web hosting company that allows outgoing mail
and use them for large mailouts.
HTH

 

[Glenn]

Damn it! I tried calling my ISP (SBC) and got absolutely no answer that made
any sense. I couldn't even get them to understand my problem. I'm pretty
sure all or most of their tech support calls are routed to India (last time
I called, I asked and confirmed that the support person I had was in India).

Anyway, I still have this problem and THINK that somehow it's Outlook. That
452 4.5.3 message is vaguely referenced in some of their Knowledge Base
articles, but no direct diagnosis or fix. The only thing I think I can add
at this point is that the System Administrator email that I get has a funky
icon where the Read/Unread mail icon is. It's a circle with some squiggly
lines and a left pointing red arrow in the circle. I can't even find a
definition for the icon for a clue to the problem.

Please help as I'm slowly going insane.

Thanks,
Glenn

 

[Glenn]

Damn it! I tried calling my ISP (SBC) and got absolutely no answer that made
any sense. I couldn't even get them to understand my problem. I'm pretty
sure all or most of their tech support calls are routed to India (last time
I called, I asked and confirmed that the support person I had was in India).

Anyway, I still have this problem and THINK that somehow it's Outlook. That
452 4.5.3 message is vaguely referenced in some of their Knowledge Base
articles, but no direct diagnosis or fix. The only thing I think I can add
at this point is that the System Administrator email that I get has a funky
icon where the Read/Unread mail icon is. It's a circle with some squiggly
lines and a left pointing red arrow in the circle. I can't even find a
definition for the icon for a clue to the problem.

Please help as I'm slowly going insane.

Thanks,
Glenn

 

[Vanguard]

Damn it! I tried calling my ISP (SBC) and got absolutely no answer
that made
any sense. I couldn't even get them to understand my problem. I'm
pretty
sure all or most of their tech support calls are routed to India (last
time
I called, I asked and confirmed that the support person I had was in
India).

Anyway, I still have this problem and THINK that somehow it's Outlook.
That
452 4.5.3 message is vaguely referenced in some of their Knowledge
Base
articles, but no direct diagnosis or fix.

Nope. It's your e-mail provider restricting the total number of
recipients (the aggregate of the To, Cc, and Bcc fields) to whom you may
send a message.

The only thing I think I can add
at this point is that the System Administrator email that I get has a
funky
icon where the Read/Unread mail icon is. It's a circle with some
squiggly
lines and a left pointing red arrow in the circle. I can't even find a
definition for the icon for a clue to the problem.

Google works. In http://www.google.com/search?q=+outlook++icons,
the first article found had a link to
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/icons.htm. The icon you describe
denotes a non-delivery report (NDR) message and, yup, that's what you
got.

You WILL have to reduce the total number of recipients per message.
Start at 10 and increase until you get the NDR again. Or use Word's
MailMerge to send them out one at a time (which means it will take
longer for you to squirt out all those messages) but be aware that you
could then hit another anti-spam quota of how many mail sessions you are
allowed per minute.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Anyway, I still have this problem and THINK that somehow it's
Outlook. That 452 4.5.3 message is vaguely referenced in some of
their Knowledge Base articles, but no direct diagnosis or fix.

RFC 2821 seems to indicate that any standard-conforming server MUST accept
at least 100 recipients prior to responding with a 452 error. Moreover, it
also says that while a client SHOULD respond to 452 errors by segmenting the
recipient list into chuncks of 100, it is not required to do so. Thus, it
appears your ISP is violating Internet standards and Outlook isn't.

 

[Vanguard]

RFC 2821 seems to indicate that any standard-conforming server MUST
accept at least 100 recipients prior to responding with a 452 error.
Moreover, it also says that while a client SHOULD respond to 452
errors by segmenting the recipient list into chuncks of 100, it is not
required to do so. Thus, it appears your ISP is violating Internet
standards and Outlook isn't.

Read the RFC again. The mail server can specify its own limits:

"If an SMTP server has an implementation limit on the number of RCPT
commands and this limit is exhausted, it MUST use a response code of 452
(but the client SHOULD also be prepared for a 552, as noted above). If
the server has a configured site-policy limitation on the number of RCPT
commands, it MAY instead use a 5XX response code."

In true fashion of RFCs, it says one thing and then requalifies it later
which results in having to interpret the specification and that leads to
confusion. Many, if not most, ISPs have a site policy limitation where
*personal* accounts have a max-recipient-per-message limit that is far
less than 100 recipients. So this isn't something unique or special to
just this OP's mail server.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Read the RFC again. The mail server can specify its own limits:

"If an SMTP server has an implementation limit on the number of RCPT
commands and this limit is exhausted, it MUST use a response code of
452 (but the client SHOULD also be prepared for a 552, as noted
above). If the server has a configured site-policy limitation on the
number of RCPT commands, it MAY instead use a 5XX response code."

Nevertheless, there is still no constraint on Outlook's reaction to the 452
error, so that part of what I said remains.

 

[Glenn]

Well, I called India again and the tech had absolutely no clue as to what I
was talking about. He didn't know anything about any kind of limits on
outbound email in terms of the number of recipients, number of messages per
day, or anything else.

The only thing he could think to do was switch my email account from a
legacy Pacbell server to an SBC/Yahoo server and THAT fixed the problem. No
more messages.

Thanks for the help.
Glenn