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Gmail Suddenly Stopped Sending My Business Emails

44 Replies

So one day (typically on a crazy busy day – Murphy’s Law), Gmail just starts bouncing your business emails that are being sent via your company mail server.  All was working fine for the last few months, and you sent other emails just a few minutes ago with no problems.

But now?  You’re getting something that looks like this:

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

email.address@gmail.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the relay mail.company-domain.com by mail.company-domain.com. [IP.Address.XXX.XX].

The error that the other server returned was:
535 Incorrect authentication data (SMTP AUTH failed with the remote server)

But this has been working perfectly for ages!  What happened?

Well, if you are still receiving email successfully to the problematic email address, the problem may be that Gmail just needs a little help in refreshing its memory.

To fix things:

  1. Go to the cog symbol on the right hand side of Gmail
  2. Go to Settings
  3. Go to Accounts and Import
  4. In the Send Mail As section, find the email address that you just sent from (which caused the bounced reply – i.e. the above error), and to the right click Edit Info.
  5. Click Next Step and then Save Changes.
  6. Try sending your email again, and all should now be well.
  7. Revel in your awesomeness.
This entry was posted in Email, Uncategorized on by .

About Sara Thornton

Sara is a Jack (or Jill) of many trades. A web designer and developer, an ethical SEO implementer, an AdWords advocate, as well as being our in house user-guide creator and trainer. In her spare time she loves a bendy/stretchy yoga session, and feels most happy when she's near the ocean (ideally with a ridiculously absorbing book).

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44 thoughts on “Gmail Suddenly Stopped Sending My Business Emails”

  1. Ahmad

    Hi Sara,

    Suddenly, we cano’t send or receive any email through our Est. gmail accounts.
    I tried the steps u mention, but i did not found Accounts and Imports in step No. 3

    “1.Go to the cog symbol on the right hand side of Gmail
    2.Go to Settings
    3.Go to Accounts and Imports
    4.In the Send Mail As section, find the email address that you just sent from (which caused the bounced reply – i.e. the above error), and to the right click Edit Info.
    5.Click Next Step and then Save Changes.
    6.Try sending your email again, and all should now be well.
    7.Revel in your awesomeness”

    Kindly help me to solve this problem

    Thanks in advance
    Ahmad

    Reply ↓
    1. Sara Thornton Post author

      Hi Ahmad,

      If you can’t receive any emails then this might not be Gmail – you might want to check with your hosting company to see if your email server is working correctly.

      Best wishes,
      Sara

      Reply ↓
  2. Kat

    I’ve suddenly started having the same problem with my work email. I followed the steps above, but it doesn’t seem to recognise my password anymore (even though I’m sure it’s the correct one). Is there anyway of changing or checking the password on the ‘next step’ section?

    Reply ↓
    1. Sara Thornton Post author

      Hi Kat,

      If it doesn’t recognise your password, then the password is most likely the problem. This means you’ll need to contact the person who supplied the email password to you (or reset your password through normal means if you are able to). Once you’ve got the correct password and update the appropriate email account, this should fix your problem.

      Hope this helps!

      Reply ↓
      1. Steve Webb

        I am having the same problem with gmail not recognising my password (which I’m sure is right). How or where do I reset this through normal means?

        Many thanks

        Steve

        Reply ↓
        1. Sara Thornton Post author

          Hi Steve,

          If your Gmail password is not being recognised then you’ll need to reset it via Google’s reset procedure: https://www.google.com/accounts/recovery/

          If your business email password is not being recognised and you want to change it, then you’ll need to contact the person or company that provided the email password details to you originally. If you created the email and password yourself, then you’ll need to return to the location where you created the password and there will most likely be instructions there to reset your password.

          I hope this helps,
          Sara

          Reply ↓
          1. Steve Webb

            Thanks for trying but not there yet. Maybe I asked the wrong question. No problem with gmail password or (I think) business email one. This is what I see when I try to ‘Save Changes’ as suggested in your original response:

            Configure your emails to be sent through bordeauxgold.com SMTP servers Learn more
            You are currently using: secured connection on port 465 using SSL
            To edit, please adjust your preferences below.

            SMTP Server: Port:
            Username:
            Password:
            Secured connection, using SSL (recommended)
            Secured connection using TLS
            Authentication failed. Please check your username/password.
            [Server response: 535 Incorrect authentication data code(535) ]

            Any other suggestions?

            Best regards

            Steve

          2. Sara Thornton Post author

            Hi again Steve,

            Was your business email setup in Gmail working fine previously? Or are you setting up your business email in Gmail for the first time?

            If you’ve followed the steps in the main article above and are still having no luck then there are a couple of things to double check:

            1. Ensure that your business email password is correct by logging into webmail (or any similar system that is provided by your original business email provider).
            2. If you’ve successfully logged into another system with your email address and password and you haven’t recently moved hosting server (or made any other hosting changes), then let me know. If you can’t successfully log into webmail (or similar) then the problem is most likely the password and you’ll need to contact the person/company who provided the password to see if it has been recently changed, and/or if it can be reset.

            Thanks,
            Sara

            P.s. – possibly a silly question, but just to double check: in step 5 in the instructions above (Click Next Step and then Save Changes), were the username and password fields already correctly populated? If they were empty then they need to be populated with the correct information (where username is your full business email address).

          3. Steve Webb

            I think I’ve solved it now by changing an individual email password within my business domain.

            Many thanks for all your help – couldn’t have thought it through without you.

            Best regards

            Steve

  4. Sid Huff

    Hi Sara…..I HOPE you can help me with this. My ‘other’ email provider is TDS Telecom. I am able to have GMAIL pick up all incoming email to the TDS account and put it into a folder labeled TDS. HOWEVER… (pregnant pause), when I try to send a group email and use the TDS email as the ‘from’ account, it is being denied by the TDS server with the error messages described above. TDS tells me TLS and port 587 should work, but does not. Is there anything ELSE I might be missing? Individual emails using the TDS as the ‘from’ address appear to work OK. Thanks for your time & help.
    Sid Huff / Marble Hill, GA

    Reply ↓
    1. Sara Thornton Post author

      Hi Sid,

      Has this always been a problem? Or is this something that has only recently become a problem?

      Also, are you using Gmail in a browser on your computer? Or are you using a mobile phone app, or a desktop client (such as Outlook or Apple Mail)?

      Reply ↓
      1. Sid Huff

        Sara, I am using Gmail on a WIN7 desktop PC with the Chrome Browser.
        Just set up my TDS email to be picked up by Gmail, so it has not yet
        worked properly. Prior to this, I used to go to tds.net and log in to
        pick up my email there, and read about the feature in Gmail, so I
        decided to see if I could simplify things. As I said, I GET my TDS
        messages just fine. I have a group email of about 25 that I send
        a blog-type email to every day. To do this,, and not SHOW all
        the addresses, I go into my TDS account, send the email to my
        Gmail address and BCC the group email account. SOME of the
        recipients GET the email but most do not. Am looking for a
        pattern. Those that don’t get the SMTP AUTH error. TDS was
        no help. Thanks again.

        Sid

        Reply ↓
        1. Sara Thornton Post author

          Hi Sid,

          If some emails are getting through but others aren’t, then it could be that the recipient ISP’s are flagging your email as spam (hence the inconsistency).

          ISP’s each have differing criteria for flagging if email is spam or not based on a variety of checks. Sending bulk BCC emails through Gmails servers most likely triggers an alarm bell for a number of ISP’s.

          There are a range of things that you can do to help the situation:
          https://blog.kissmetrics.com/avoid-the-spam-folder/
          http://serverfault.com/questions/48428/how-to-send-emails-and-avoid-them-being-classified-as-spam
          http://forums.cpanel.net/threads/email-sent-from-server-marked-as-spam-by-gmail.306031/

          If you follow the above links and still have no luck, then maybe look to use an external service such as MailChimp for your newsletters.

          I hope this helps,
          Sara

          Reply ↓
  7. Lisa

    Success! Thank you!!!

    In my case I had changed my password with my host and I think gmail needed me to renter the new password but didn’t know to tell me to do that. Your instructions lead me there. thank you!

    Lisa

    Reply ↓
  9. Kenny

    This worked perfectly for me! Thanks so much….it was driving me nuts trying to figure out why this problem just started happening….

    Reply ↓
  13. Edgar

    Thank you for posting this. This fixed it right away! I had to update my outgoing server name. And worked great.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sara Thornton Post author

      Hi Camille,

      The “Edit Info” link should open a new tab or window, so you may need to check if there’s a tab/window hiding behind your current window. You may also want to check that a browser or 3rd-party pop-up blocker isn’t preventing the new tab/window from opening.

      Best wishes,
      Sara

      Reply ↓