No Bounce, Error or NDR for Oversize (25+ MB) Emails

When an oversize email (25MB or larger) is forwarded to Salesforce, it isn't processed nor is a bounce, error, or non-delivery report (NDR) sent. The email is essentially blackholed due to backscatter prevention on many mail servers. When sending the same email directly to the Salesforce routing address, a non-delivery report is sent to the original sender.

May 28, 2020
Knowledge

Symptoms

Emails larger than 25MB may be lost or "blackholed" when forwarded to Salesforce. For example, oversize emails are lost when they follow this path:
Sender > Org Mail Server > Salesforce

but an NDR is returned when the same email is sent direct to Salesforce:
Sender > Salesforce

Solutions

Your organization's mail server may not be sending an NDR due to backscatter prevention. For information on backscatter prevention, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(email)

Contact your organizations IT department or mail server administrator and ask them to set a limit of 25MB on email received to your public facing email address(es). This will ensure that oversize emails are stopped at your organization's mail server and an NDR is sent from your mail server rather than the emails being passed on to Salesforce.

The following tips are provided as is not supported under Email to Case Premium support.

Microsoft Exchange
In Microsoft Exchange you can set message size restrictions for individual mailboxes or contacts. In Microsoft Exchange 2010 server this is configured under the Contact or Mailbox properties > Mail Flow Settings tab > Message Size Restrictions.

Gmail

The easiest way to address this in Gmail is by creating an attachment compliance filter. The filter will check all incoming mail to the email address you'd like to monitor, and is triggered when a certain criteria you designate is satisfied. Then, it automatically sends your customized response back to the sender. Messages that do not meet the criteria will complete their transit to destination.

Important: The following filter applies at the organization level. If you wish to apply this filter to a particular email address, create a new organization on your account and move the user to that organization. Then, with that organization selected, proceed to create the filter. Otherwise, the filter will monitor all incoming messages for the entire organization.

For more information about organizations please review the following Gmail Help Center articles:

Creating the filter

Log in to your Google Apps Control panel.
From the blue bar at the top, click Settings.
On the left panel, click Email.
On the right side scroll down to Attachment Compliance and click Configure.
On step one of this new window, check Inbound. With the reset of checks you can set this filter to monitor Outgoing mail as well, and internal communications.
For step two we set up the account to monitor. Please select:
- If ANY of the following match the message.
- Click the Add button.
- On the drop down menu change File type to Message size and type your maximum size allowed. Please note this will weigh both the message itself as well as the attachment. Then click Save.
- Then, at step three, change the drop down menu from Modify Message to Reject Message, and you'll be prompted to a text box where you can set the canned response.
- At step 4 there is a bypass rule to allow messages from specific domains or users. To disable this, simply remove the check mark.
To save this filter click the Add setting button.
While on the email settings screen, click the Save changes button.

This filter will take a few moments to take effect. To test, use an external email address to send messages over 25MB in size, and verify the email is bounced back.

Status

This behavior is, by design, due to backscatter prevention in many email servers.

Additional Information

For information on backscatter prevention, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(email)

Title

No Bounce, Error or NDR for Oversize (25+ MB) Emails