Why am I getting a Microsoft bounce message and how can I resolve it?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests verifying the email address and checking if it's filtering emails instead of indicating non-existence. Zacharias also suggests to raise it with the ESP.
Email marketer from Microsoft Community notes that the bounce message often indicates that the recipient's email admin has placed restrictions on who can send to the recipient's email address, advising to contact the recipient by other means to advise them of the issue.
Email marketer from SuperUser shares that this bounce code is often related to distribution lists that don't allow emails from external sources, the suggested resolution is to try to find an individual user instead of the distribution list.
Email marketer from Spiceworks mentions it is a permissions issue on the recipient side, they need to allow you to email them or email the distribution list.
Email marketer from Microsoft Q&A suggests the problem is likely a distribution group setting that's blocking external senders. The marketer advises checking the group's configuration in the Exchange admin center.
Email marketer from Microsoft Community shares that the bounce message can be caused by recipient settings within their Microsoft 365 environment restricting external senders, or an incorrect configuration.
Email marketer from Microsoft Q&A explains that the issue could be due to the recipient's mailbox being configured to only accept messages from authenticated senders. Recommends checking recipient's mailbox settings.
Email marketer from Microsoft Community responds that the error often means that the email address you are sending to is a group, and the group is configured not to accept external emails. The advice given is to contact the group owner.
Marketer from Email Geeks says that the Microsoft bounce message likely occurs when trying to email a group from outside the organisation, suggesting that the address might be a group address that doesn't allow external contact. They also mention that misconfigured aliases could be the cause.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests sanity-checking delivery through a different MTA (like Gmail) to rule out local issues when diagnosing email delivery problems.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from Spam Resource explains that bounce messages, including those from Microsoft, often indicate a policy issue or a misconfiguration at the recipient's end. She highlights that it's essential to understand the specific error code provided in the bounce message to diagnose the problem accurately, suggesting closer inspection of the recipients configurations is required.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that a common cause for bounce messages is failure to authenticate the sender. They indicate you should check your SPF and DKIM records are correctly configured and your email domain is properly authenticated.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains the error often relates to the sender not being authorized to send to the recipient. The guidance is to check that external sending is permitted in the Office 365/Microsoft 365 environment.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains that error 550 5.7.1 indicates that the sender is blocked because the recipient's email server requires authentication before accepting messages. Resolution involves ensuring the sender's email program is configured to authenticate.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains that the error can indicate the sender is blocked, and to resolve it you should ensure the sender is authorized to send emails to the recipient.