How to identify and fix email delivery issues in Outlook 365.

I am sure there have been times when your emails have been bounced back to you

even when you have checked the email address several times for errors.

The truth is that there can be several reasons why your email is getting sent back. In Office 365, there’s a resource that makes troubleshooting this a little easier. In Office 365, there's a “non-delivery report” message that is sent back to you when your email has failed to reach the intended recipient. At first glance this report can be difficult to understand but knowing where to look can help you or your email administrator get to the root of the issue.

Below is an example of an NDR from Office 365 and although the non-delivery report can vary in style, we’ll use this format for our example for this post. Keep in mind that not all issues can be resolved by "you" the sender. You may have an issue where the recipient may have to do something on their end or your email administrator may need to solve the issue.

a.) Your NDR report will look something like this (Figure.1). In RED shows us where it failed and instructions on how to fix it will be listed as follows.

Figure 1.

b.) The second part of the report (Figure 2.) offers even more detail and can be used by an administrator but there are still bits of information that you can examine. Within the “More Info for Email Admins” portion of the report. This error code can be used to lookup solutions that may also help resolve the issue. Try looking up your error code for a solution here.

Figure 2.

d.) At the bottom portion of your report, you will see a “Message Hops” section (Figure 3.) that will show you the path your message took. This may also help determine what and/or where the issue lies.

Figure 3.

This is just a small sample of what can be outlined in a typical NDR report. In most cases your email may be getting rejected because you spelled the address incorrectly or perhaps that recipient’s account no longer exists. When you have checked for this and your unable to figure out the problem, then look for your particular error code in the list. As I stated earlier, you may need to get your mail admin involved as you may not have the access to complete tasks required to resolve the issue.