Interpreting failed-delivery reports

IT Services

Interpreting failed-delivery reports

Contents

1. 550-RPT-UNK: Recipient unknown
2. 550 5.1.1 RESOLVER.ADR.ExRecipNotFound
3. #554 5.6.0 STOREDRV.Deliver; Corrupt message content

Occassionally, Nexus may reject a message that you send and return a report of a failed delivery such as the following:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists: user@domain.com.

The exact reason for failure is given under the heading Diagnostic information for administrators. Below we give some explanations of the common failures including the instructions how to resolve them.

1. 550-RPT-UNK: Recipient unknown

The email address that you are trying to contact does not exist. If the address is an Oxford address, this may be because:

the person has left the University,
the address you are using is no longer a valid address for the person you are trying to contact.

To find the email address of a member of the University go to University Contact Search.

2. 550 5.1.1 RESOLVER.ADR.ExRecipNotFound

If the offending email address is reported to be something like

IMCEAEX-_O=NEXUS_OU=EXCHANGE+20ADMINISTRATIVE...RECIPIENTS_CN=username1@ad.oak.ox.ac.uk

then it is likely that your email client attempted to use a Nexus internal address of this recipient. This sometimes happens if you email them before their account was migrated to Nexus and your email client remembered their old internal address that is now no longer valid. To resolve this problem you must delete the address that is cached in your client.

Outlook 2003 and 2007

Ensure that your local copy of the address book is up to of date.
Download a new copy from the server by going to [Tools] -> [Send/Receive] -> [Download Address Book] and then click OK.
Follow the instructions for Outlook Web Access Premium below.

Outlook Web Access Premium (Internet Explorer)

Compose a new email and start typing the name of the person you cannot send to into the To: field.
When their name appears, use the arrow keys to highlight it and then press DEL to remove it from the list of suggestions.
Find the correct address from the address list stored on Nexus.
Again, start typing the recipients name into the To: field but then press CTRL+K to initiate a search for this person on Nexus.
Alternatively, click the To: button and select the person from the list there.

The incorrect entry in your autocomplete list will be replaced with the newly selected address book entry.

In Outlook Web Access Light

Choose Options in the top right, then Messaging from the left hand bar.
Under Email Name Resolution click Clear Most Recent Recipients List.

In Entourage

Open the Preferences window by clicking on the [Entourage] menu, followed by the [Preferences] option.
In the Mail and News Preferences section, click Compose.
On the right hand side click the Clear List button in the Recent Addresses section.

If the format of the address does not match the above then another server refused to take delivery of your message. Scroll down through the message and look for any information returned by the remote email server that may indicate why this has occured.

3. #554 5.6.0 STOREDRV.Deliver; Corrupt message content

This error message indicates that the message sent was corrupt in some way.

The most common cause of this problem is that some (older) versions of Thunderbird or Firefox and their derivatives incorrectly send some attachments, which Nexus refuses to accept. The setting appears to be preserved in the profile folder and hence it may also happen even if you have the latest version of Thunderbird or Firefox.

Thunderbird or Firefox

Close Thunderbird or Firefox.
Open the folder containg your profile data.
Delete the mimeTypes.rdf file.
Restart Thunderbird or Firefox and retry sending the message.

The profile folder for Thunderbird is found in the following locations (replace the terms in capitals with locally valid terms):

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\RANDOM.default
Windows Vista and 7: C:\Users\USERNAME\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\RANDOM.default
Linux: /home/USERNAME/.mozilla/thunderbird/RANDOM.default
OS X: /Users/USERNAME/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/RANDOM.default

The profile folder for Firefox can be found in the following locations (replace the terms in capitals with locally valid terms):

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\RANDOM.default
Windows Vista and 7: C:\Users\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\RANDOM.default
Linux: /home/USERNAME/.mozilla/firefox/RANDOM.default
OS X: /Users/USERNAME/Library/Firefox/Profiles/RANDOM.default