Error in To field of Email Tool

[FFFool]

I know that the Email Tool requires everything to be a "Valid" email address. What is the actual criteria here? 

I have an email that I send out a couple of times a month that I am attempting to automate. The tool fails whether we use a field to populate the To section, or if I copy and paste them in manually. I can think of a few reasons for this, but don't have any definitive answers. 

My possible reasons in order of liklihood by my own assessment:

1. Can we not put a distribution group with @domain.com at the end of it? 

2. I know there are several on the email who have moved on from our company that I haven't removed yet. I would just expect to get an email return though, not for them to be blocked.

3. Is there some sort of field length limitation on the Email Tool? I haven't noticed this before, so I think this is unlikely. 

Furthermore, I'm not too sure of how to test these hypotheses(Specifically the distribtution one), without sending emails to a bunch of my actual users. 

Thanks in advance! 

Specific Error is Record#1: Unable to send email:"Error with Recipients:...(lists recipients)"

[jgo]

Hi @FFFool,

Any chance of being able to share your workflow with maybe a sample of the data you're feeding it?

The "Email" tool isn't all too picky, actually. The issue that comes up the most is that it wont sent because the user doesn't add or know the SMTP server to use. That said, it's commonly used improperly and potentially send a lot of emails to one person.

#1 You should be able to use any valid email address, so if the DG has one, should push through.

#2 Right, the email should send regardless if it's an active/valid account and the mail server will send the undeliverable email to whatever email address is set as the "From" address.

#3 I've never hit any email limitation, however, it might be possible. How many email addresses are you attempting to push through on one record?

Again, if you're able to share your workflow, that will help with troubleshoot further.

[FFFool]

Hey @jgo

Can't exactly share the exact workflow as there is a bunch of individuals' emails in there and given that I'm also a bit suspicious that the way one of those specific emails is formatted is the issue, I'm not really sure how to proceed with that. 

We have sent probably thousands of emails using our SMTP settings, so that is definitely not the culprit. 

I've noticed that it doesn't seem to be too picky. I created my own distrib group with just my team in it to test it and it worked. 

It also let me send an email to someone who has left the company, and I just got a return email telling me it wasn't valid, so that wasn't it. 

The only thing we can think now is that the To field simply has to be too long or there is some strange character making it's way into the to field that is causing it to kick back, so I'm going to go through the current list we have stored in excel to make sure. 

Ideally, we could just send the emails individually until the erroneously entered email came up and we could fix that specific one, but this email goes to a couple hundred individuals pretty high up in our organization, so I'm not sure where to go. 

One thing I'm thinking of doing is setting up a new DG and just including everyone that needs to be on the email into that one DG and then there shouldn't be any issues and I'm hoping I can set it up to be self service to add/remove as well, but I've never set one up other than our groups, so I'm not sure. 

Thanks again for the response. 

[FFFool]

Sorry, also it is being sent to 98 recipients, some of which themselves are Distribution Groups. 

[FFFool · Accepted solution]

Error is found. One email has single quotes around it, which, in outlook is fine, but not in Alteryx Email too, which makes sense. 

[jgo]

It stings the most when it's the simpliest of things!

Glad you were able to find the issue.

[thedr9wningman]

My lesson here for myself: The TRIM function is your friend. Or the Data Cleansing tool, even. Scrub your data clean!! Thanks for the reminder.