I don’t think you have to understand all the terms used in the email lexicon. But, there are certain terms, you just need to understand. Bounce is an example. In this article, let’s see what exactly this term is and find reasons for why this happens.
What is Bounce in Emails?
In simple words, if an email can’t be delivered to a particular address, it’s a bounce. In such a case, a bounce-back email (receipt email) will be returned to the sender with the text “Mail delivery failed returning message to sender”. This return mail will contain the message the sender tried to deliver and the reason for mail delivery failure.
Reasons For Email Bounce
- Non-Existent Email Address: The email address is incorrect, or the person may have closed their account.
- Undeliverable Email: The recipient’s email server is temporarily down, overloaded, or unreachable.
- Receiver’s Mailbox Full: The recipient’s inbox is full, so your email can’t be delivered until they clear space.
- Blocked Email: The recipient’s server has blocked your email.
The Two Types of Email Bounces
Bounced emails are categorized as either soft bounce or hard bounce.
A hard bounce occurs when an email is permanently returned to the sender, typically due to an incorrect recipient email address.
A soft bounce happens when the recipient’s mail server recognizes the email but returns it due to issues like a full mailbox, a temporarily unavailable server, or an email size exceeding limits.
Contents of a Bounce Message
Typically, a bounce message contains the time and the date when the message bounced, details of the mail server that bounced the mail, and finally the RFC code and the reason for the bounce.
In general, soft bounces will be depicted by a 4XX code, and hard bounces by a 5XX code. Anyhow, some ISPs do not follow this convention.
To automatically Remove Bounced Messages in Outlook
Be careful not to delete important emails while clearing bounced items in Outlook. Recovering deleted emails is manageable with advanced PST repair tools that can restore deleted data.
Unfortunately, there’s no option in Outlook to automatically remove Outlook-bounced emails. Anyhow, you can use some third-party tools or plugins. Easy Mail Merge, Incredimail, etc. are some of those tools.
Be careful not to delete important emails while clearing bounced items in Outlook. Recovering deleted emails is manageable with advanced PST repair tools that can restore deleted data.
Sometimes, there could be situations where you just can’t access your emails. Here is how to repair MS Outlook data files that can’t be opened. But, it’s always good to avoid such unnecessary situations.
