554 Denied - What does it mean?

mapski99

New Member
stanbusk said:
#4 There is not a known or unknown problem with Word. There are rare occasions where copying and pasting from Word can give problems.

It's a known problem to me as I spent 5+ hours trying to troubleshoot the problem. Also, you suggest not to copy and paste from Word to maxbulk, and you state right there that on rare occassions it can occur - so it's known to be a problem.

stanbusk said:
What you could do is to first try with the MaxBulk document that gives problem and remove half the text, Then try again. If it still doesn't work remove more text. You can do that until it works. Then try to localize the exact place it fails. It would be interesting to see what character or if invisible the character code that is causing that.

I have already done this to certain level. Of course at that point I didn't know that Word "could" be a problem, so I was considering image format, character length, inline image position as factors as well.

I will give it a shot with this document to see if I can isolate the problem.
 

mapski99

New Member
I contacted Verio (the mail/web host), and they state that 554 is related to their spam filter on their side which is blocking the message.

Their website FAQs stating that 554 was something different - grrrr.

No wonder I couldn't isolate specific characters within the Word file that were causing trouble.
 

stanbusk

Administrator
Staff member
Sorry if my explanations were not clear. About #4, it is not a known problem because it is the very first time I hear about error 554. It is also the first time I hear a piece of text is causing a protocol error.

What is known about Word is that in rare occasions some styles were not properly rendered, nothing else. Usually reformatting that piece of text were enough. Actually I saw that problem in Mac OS 9 and first Mac OS X versions. I haven't heard of it in some time now. In any case that wasn't causing protocol errors. Just text supposed to be bold wasn't or things like that. That problem was caused by invisible control characters wrongly passed to MaxBulk thru the clipboard. As far as I know that problem were fixed with last Mac OS X versions.

In your case I thought it could be something related to this *rare known issue*. But it is clear it is not the same.

554 error code can mean anything actually. As you state below it can be also triggered by a spam filter. Personally I think it is a big error from Verio then. Anyway, try to look at that article "avoiding to be caught by spam filter". It contains the address of a spam test system you can use to get a spam report for your message.
 

mapski99

New Member
Stan,

It turns out that the entire problem was VERIO.

VERIO has unsophisticated filters on our shared hosting account. They are tagging our outgoing mail as SPAM.

Verio as incorrectly states what the 554 error means on their webpages, which lead me down the wrong path. After your suggestions to go through line by line and check to see what is causing the problem in Word, I was unable to find any reasonable patterm. So I finally called Verio. That is when they said it's an spam filter on the outgoing mail.

Using the MaxBulk 'spam' review tool, I was able to change the Subject to get the full text through. But it wouldn't work with the inline image.
 

mapski99

New Member
In Summary,

MaxBulk Mailer was not responsible for my "554 denied" error at all. The problem was at the mail host.

The mail host was treating our outgoing message as spam and blocking it.

Cut and paste from Word to MaxBulk was not the problem at all.

MaxBulk Mailer worked great once I used a different mail host that wasn't treating my mail as spam.

MaxBulk rocks!

Stan was very reponsive as helpful.

-J
 

mapski99

New Member
If you get a "554" error when sending mail -> CALL YOUR ISP!

Don't mess around with settings, find out how your mail host/isp classifies a "554" error message. Ask them why you are getting the error.

-J
 

stanbusk

Administrator
Staff member
Good to hear! I was a bit worried about what was causing that problem. Now it is clear. Thanks for the updates. They will be useful for other users.
 

FordTruckMan

New Member
Any other solution from Verio?

Hi - just joining in after suddenly encountering these same problems on my Verio-hosted email/web/etc plan. I've sent mailings out to our mailing list many times before with no problems until Wednesday of this week (just got lucky? something recently changed?)

I guess my question is: Did Verio offer any other solution to the problem? (i.e. they could agree to NOT mark you mail as spam or tell you what to avoid or anything like that?)
 

nanoplanet

New Member
Re: Any other solution from Verio?

FordTruckMan said:
Hi - just joining in after suddenly encountering these same problems on my Verio-hosted email/web/etc plan. I've sent mailings out to our mailing list many times before with no problems until Wednesday of this week (just got lucky? something recently changed?)

I guess my question is: Did Verio offer any other solution to the problem? (i.e. they could agree to NOT mark you mail as spam or tell you what to avoid or anything like that?)

Jumping in to this discussion, grateful to find it. Also a Verio customer (since way back when, several acquisitions ago they were a sweet little hosting company called Hiway), and ready to depart because of this and other mail-related challenges.

Have been likewise frustrated with increases in the 554:Denied responses in (in my case) Eudora, for just regular solo emails. Figured out that it was content-related at the SMTP level early on; though to be frank, knowing that didn't and doesn't make it any less annoying.

Am seriously on the lookout now for a viable business email solution that is not bound up with webhosting. My sense is that these very large companies simply get overwhelmed by their spam issues, and tend to use blunt instruments on them.

Anyway, have found some things that can help get legitimate emails past the lame 554 denials, at least on Verio:
1) Take out anything that says "Fwd," and the attendant ">" marks.
2) Take out any language - down to single words - that could be construed as, um, colorful, even if it is not meant in that way. If you happen to have Eudora, and the software gives your message a hot pepper, it'll usually highlight the "questionable" text so you'll know what to change.
3) This one sucks - take out any hyperlink in your message that looks like it could, even remotely, come from any source that spammers are known to frequent. (Just took out a hyperlink that included topica.com, and voila, the message went through. Imagine if that link had been the entire point of the message... fortunately, it wasn't.)

Any suggestions for excellent (read: intelligent) hosted business email with 24/7 phone support? At reasonable rates? Yours truly and clients are all ears.

Thanks!
 
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