A friend of mine has an address with an & in the local part, like aa&bb@hetnet.nl
I cannot send emails to him with Thunderbird The message I get is:
" An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded: restricted characters in address.
Please check the message recipient "aa&bb@hetnet.nl" and try again.
Gmail and Windows Live mail do not have this problem.
If I send with windows live mail I use the same outgoing SMTP server of my provider.
Does anybody have an idea what/where the problem is, and if/how I can solve it?
Thanks
Eddy
Can't send email to address with &
-
tanstaafl
- Moderator
- Posts: 49647
- Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm
Re: Can't send email to address with &
https://www.jochentopf.com/email/chars.html states: "As far as RFC2821 and RFC2822 are concerned this is a normal character. It is often used for company names like "Acme & Partners". Although this is hardly a reason, you may not want to use it, because the & sign is a UNIX shell special character. Another problem is that the & must be URL encoded when used in <mailto:> URLs."
My first thought was that your SMTP provider rejected the email address, but you state WLM doesn't have that problem using the same SMTP Provider. I'd start by trying to send a message to that email address using that providers webmail (browser based). I'd expect it to impose the same restrictions in webmail that it does with the SMTP server. If it rejects it then I'd assume your WLM configuration wasn't what you thought it was. If it accepts it, check whether your anti-virus scanner is configured to scan outgoing messages. If so, disable that feature and try again. If its still rejected, I suggest you enable SMTP logging per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_logging_for_mail/news, try again, and verify the log file contains the same error message. There is the possibility that the SMTP server returned just a error code and Thunderbird generated that error message to make it more intelligible.
If none of that helps, try a different SMTP server. If you don't have another account I suggest you add one from a different email provider. Its useful for troubleshooting, and in emergencies if there is a problem with your normal email provider.
My first thought was that your SMTP provider rejected the email address, but you state WLM doesn't have that problem using the same SMTP Provider. I'd start by trying to send a message to that email address using that providers webmail (browser based). I'd expect it to impose the same restrictions in webmail that it does with the SMTP server. If it rejects it then I'd assume your WLM configuration wasn't what you thought it was. If it accepts it, check whether your anti-virus scanner is configured to scan outgoing messages. If so, disable that feature and try again. If its still rejected, I suggest you enable SMTP logging per http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_logging_for_mail/news, try again, and verify the log file contains the same error message. There is the possibility that the SMTP server returned just a error code and Thunderbird generated that error message to make it more intelligible.
If none of that helps, try a different SMTP server. If you don't have another account I suggest you add one from a different email provider. Its useful for troubleshooting, and in emergencies if there is a problem with your normal email provider.
-
EddyO
- Posts: 2
- Joined: January 30th, 2016, 4:50 am
Re: Can't send email to address with &
Tanstaafl - thank you very much for your note.
I followed your recommendation, used the webmail of my provider and found that the same restriction holds. I went back to the Windows Live account (and the intended receiver) and found that it had not sent the message, it just had disappeared.
So: the restriction / refusal to allow & in the email address had nothing to do with Thunderbird, it sits with my provider.
I checked if the predecessor standards of RFC2821 saw & as special character, but that appeared not to be true.
So my provider has an overcautious restriction ( & is a Unix special char as you mentioned). I called them: they were not aware, and don't intend to change it. So indeed Ill use a different SMTP server.
Thanks again, topic closed.
I followed your recommendation, used the webmail of my provider and found that the same restriction holds. I went back to the Windows Live account (and the intended receiver) and found that it had not sent the message, it just had disappeared.
So: the restriction / refusal to allow & in the email address had nothing to do with Thunderbird, it sits with my provider.
I checked if the predecessor standards of RFC2821 saw & as special character, but that appeared not to be true.
So my provider has an overcautious restriction ( & is a Unix special char as you mentioned). I called them: they were not aware, and don't intend to change it. So indeed Ill use a different SMTP server.
Thanks again, topic closed.