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How do I stop Mail from continually trying to resend a bounced email?

A while back I sent an email to two addresses at once. The email went to one address successfully but bounced back from the other (with the message 'Failed MX Lookup; try again later). Mail keeps trying to resend to the failed address and I get bounce back emails. How can I stop it trying to send the email? The email is in my 'Sent' folder, so no use deleting it from there - it just seems to be caught in a cyberspace loop. It's not ruining my life, just vaguely annoying.

The other issue is that the failed address is an office I do need to send stuff to, so if anyone can tell me how to stop my emails getting rejected from there, that would be great...

Posted on Mar 22, 2016 6:11 PM

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Posted on Mar 24, 2016 5:23 PM

Is there a message still in your Outbox? If there is and it is this one delete it from there.


More likely Mail has 'successfully' sent it to your mail server and it is your mail server that is repeatedly trying to send it to the other persons mail server. In this case the options are to delete it from your mail servers outgoing queue - something normal users cannot do but the server administrator might be able to do for you.


Even if there is nothing you can do your self a mail server will normally only try sending an email for a finite number of attempts or days and then will stop. The number will vary depending on the server settings.


As to why it is failing for a presumed known good email address there are many possible reasons. In this case based on the limited information available it could be one of the following.


  • The recipient has failed to renew the domain name registration and as a result their domain has been suspended, as a result your server cannot 'find' it
  • Someone has accidentally messed up the DNS settings for the recipients domain, not impossible but unlikely
  • Their internet connection is currently broken and they run their own DNS server so as a side effect their DNS record has also become unavailable, it is for this sort of situation that your mail server tries repeatedly for a time in the hope their link comes back up
  • If you have typed their email address wrong in this case the domain name, then your server will not be able to find it as it is looking for the wrong name
  • They have recently moved Internet providers and/or offices and during this time their systems may be offline


In many of these cases they should have specified a secondary MX record so that if their own mail server is temporarily unavailable the mails get sent to the secondary entry and temporarily held their until their mail server is back on line then the secondary MX server will forward all the temporarily held emails to them. Some people/companies fail to setup secondary MX records.

2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Mar 24, 2016 5:23 PM in response to Boycette

Is there a message still in your Outbox? If there is and it is this one delete it from there.


More likely Mail has 'successfully' sent it to your mail server and it is your mail server that is repeatedly trying to send it to the other persons mail server. In this case the options are to delete it from your mail servers outgoing queue - something normal users cannot do but the server administrator might be able to do for you.


Even if there is nothing you can do your self a mail server will normally only try sending an email for a finite number of attempts or days and then will stop. The number will vary depending on the server settings.


As to why it is failing for a presumed known good email address there are many possible reasons. In this case based on the limited information available it could be one of the following.


  • The recipient has failed to renew the domain name registration and as a result their domain has been suspended, as a result your server cannot 'find' it
  • Someone has accidentally messed up the DNS settings for the recipients domain, not impossible but unlikely
  • Their internet connection is currently broken and they run their own DNS server so as a side effect their DNS record has also become unavailable, it is for this sort of situation that your mail server tries repeatedly for a time in the hope their link comes back up
  • If you have typed their email address wrong in this case the domain name, then your server will not be able to find it as it is looking for the wrong name
  • They have recently moved Internet providers and/or offices and during this time their systems may be offline


In many of these cases they should have specified a secondary MX record so that if their own mail server is temporarily unavailable the mails get sent to the secondary entry and temporarily held their until their mail server is back on line then the secondary MX server will forward all the temporarily held emails to them. Some people/companies fail to setup secondary MX records.

How do I stop Mail from continually trying to resend a bounced email?

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