CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi!

I'm incredibly frustrated with Civimail right now. I think I hit about every single bug on my way to send a newsletter to about 400 recipients.

When I thought I was done the following happened:

For some weird reason, Civimail tells me that 94% of the e-mail addresses bounced. Seems highly unlikely... I also got an error message that I'm unable to reproduce.

As a result Civimail put almost all of the contacts in the group on hold. Is there a fast way to remove the on hold status for all contacts in those groups? Otherwise I'd have to edit every single contact...

I've tried deleting the group and uploading the contacts again... Doesn't work. Civimail remembers the on hold status...

I'd be very thankful for any suggestion.

LEternity I had a LOT of trouble with inexplicable bounces in CiviMail, I am pretty sure I have hit on a solution, you might want to try setting the following options, let us know how it goes.

http://www.yourdomain.com/civicrm/admin/mail?reset=1

Under the section "Settings - CiviMail"

Try these options:

Mailer Spool Period 180
Mailer Batch Limit 90
Mailer Spool Limit 90

these figures are by no means from an expert but I surmise they are slowing down the firing of email from CiviMail through your SMTP host and in the event of a hiccup only the mail remaining in the limited run will be affected - that is the process will start again with a new connection.
I was sometimes getting thousands bounced with “Unknown” as the reason.
This change allowed me to finally send to over 5000 recipients with no errors, whew!

As to why you are getting contacts flagged as on hold though I cant help as that wasn’t happening to me.

Hi adshill, I just checked the sandbox site (http://sandbox.civicrm.org/civicrm/admin/mail?reset=1) and the above settings are still at the same location so they should be in your 3.01 installation - what are you getting returned at that url?

What smtp settings do you have for civimail to send out through? At this admin section - Outbound Email (SMTP/Sendmail) - http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/civicrm/admin/setting/smtp?reset=1

If you are using sendmail you can check sendmail logs - the location of those logs will vary depending on the system you are running.

Hope that helps.

Matt.

I ran into this bug with a few sites on 3.0.4.  CiviMail mailings had a bounce rate somewhere around 90%, which is not appropriate for our data at all.   An upgrade to 3.1.2 will hopefully fix the problem for the future.

For problems of the past...the most direct way to remove all "ON HOLD" status is this MySQL query:
update civicrm_email set on_hold = 0;Warning: backup your database before running any direct queries.  
Warning: this query will remove all "ON HOLD" status from email addresses, whether the email should be on hold or NOT!


Question: I cannot find documentation for ON HOLD status. Why can I find no documentation in the Wiki on ON HOLD?  I have looked here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/CiviMail+Report  as well as the Admin and User section of CiviMail in the wiki....can't find it...am I missing something?

• When working properly, is ON HOLD status created from which circumstances...a hard bounce (mailbox full, not found), an out-of-office reply, or both?
• When is ON HOLD status is removed?  Is it permanent?
• How can a user search for contacts ON HOLD?  I can't find a way using Advanced Search.  Is it possible?
• How can a user that doesn't know how to make a MySQL query remove ON HOLD in any way other than manually on a per-Contact basis?

 

I would be HAPPY to write some documentation in the Wiki if someone can answer the above questions explain how OH HOLD works more thoroughly.

I had the civimail contact email hold problem with 3.1.1 and here is what I'm finding with 3.1.2

Love the new look over version 1.9

With version 3.1.2, when the civicrm.settings.php file in the drupal/sites/default folder has the setting:
define( 'CIVICRM_SITE_KEY', null );

If I manually run the link:
http://<mydomain>/drupal/civicrm/mailing/queue?reset=1
the mailing goes out fine and contact settings are not changed.

However, when I run the cron job:
wget 'http://<mydomain>/drupal/sites/all/modules/civicrm/bin/civimail.cronjob.php?name=<myuser>&pass=<mypassword>'
I get the following message in the account root directory:
ERROR: You need to send a valid key to execute this file. More info at:http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Command-line+Script+Configuration

... so when I change the civicrm.settings.php to have
define( 'CIVICRM_SITE_KEY', '01234567890123456789' );

Then when I run the cron job with:
wget 'http://<mydomain>/drupal/sites/all/modules/civicrm/bin/civimail.cronjob.php?name=<myuser>&pass=<mypassword>&key=01234567890123456789'
or
manually run the link:
http://<mydomain>/drupal/civicrm/mailing/queue?reset=1

then

in both cases with the Key defined in the civicrm.settings.php file, I observe that all the contacts mailed bounce (fake bounce - I don't think they are really bouncing) and each mailed contact is placed on hold.

It is getting late and maybe I'm being fooled, but I've replicated the observations more than once with consistent results.

Also, with version 1.9 I had trouble with civimail cron because I think there were two civicrm.settings.php files.  With 3.1.2, I'm only changing the civicrm.settings.php file in my drupal/sites/default folder and have not located another.  

Are other CiviMail users experiencing the above behavior with 3.1.2 ??

Do love the new GUI interface for CiviMail.

Thanks.

It's probably good to retest at a different time and after a nights sleep.

= = = = Test 1 = = = = =
This time i changed the civicrm.settings.php file to comment out the key not just set it to null:
//define( 'CIVICRM_SITE_KEY', null );
//define( 'CIVICRM_SITE_KEY', '01234567890123456789' );

Verified that the Cron job has been removed and is not running

Verified that the email addresses for the two in the mailing are not on hold

Submitting mailing  - it is now scheduled

Manually run the cron job from a link:
http://<mydomain>/drupal/civicrm/mailing/queue?reset=1

CiviMail says emails bounced
No emails received
Email contacts changed to on-hold

Ran above Test 1 three times with same results using link to run cron and after removing the on-hold each time
Civimail reports bounce, emails not received and contacts changed to on hold

= = = = =
took contacts off email on-hold

uncommented first Key definition
define( 'CIVICRM_SITE_KEY', null );
//define( 'CIVICRM_SITE_KEY', '01234567890123456789' );

Re-ran above test

emails went out fine with the define( 'CIVICRM_SITE_KEY', null );
using manual link to run cron
civimail reports emails went out without bouncing
civimail emails received.

= = = = = = = = =
I have not rerun cpanel automatic cron yet, but last nights test, had to have key to run and when run put contacts receiving emails on hold.
= = = = = == = =

I've seen several discussions about 3.x putting contacts on hold and I'm thinking they may be experiencing what I'm observing.  But might be a configuration issue - would be nice to have others confirm same or different results.

Thanks - Dave

I have created some documentation in the Wiki about bounce handling and on hold status here:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/Bounce+Handling
Along with links to this page from the Admin and Users' section of the Wiki.

If you have any useful additions or important corrections, please edit.

Hm, the dependence mailings bouncing (which puts the contacts on hold) on the site key is really strange – and so far is only experienced on Denver Dave’s test system (unless I missed something).

It would be great if this can be tracked down (with the contacts being taken off the hold between attempts, or, ideally, the test db reset to the same state) in all of the following to make sure there indeed is a relation: undefined CIVICRM_SITE_KEY, CIVICRM_SITE_KEY set to null and CIVICRM_SITE_KEY set to a value.