Email Undeliverable: "maximum allowed line length is 998 octets"

Once in a while, you might get an email bounce back with an error which reads something like

550 maximum allowed line length is 998 octets, got 1012

This is due to a long-term bug in Microsoft Outlook. Some internal encoding in the email has become too long and some email servers are unable to handle it.

The only reliable way that we know to solve this is to:

  1. Open a new, blank email
  2. Open the mail you tried to send from your SENT folder.
  3. Copy the subject and contents of the mail you tried to send.
  4. Add back the recpients.
  5. Send the new email.

 

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