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I get a "Too many recipients" Thunderbird error msg when trying to send a group email -- how many is too many ? does Thunderbird have a limit?

  • 8 replies
  • 14 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by Zenos

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My ISP says it doesn't impose a limit on the number of recipients in a group email, BUT still I get a Thunderbird error msg. Why?

My ISP says it doesn't impose a limit on the number of recipients in a group email, BUT still I get a Thunderbird error msg. Why?

All Replies (8)

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"There appears to be a limit of approximately 60 addresses when sending messages if you enter each address separately."

This doesn't appear to me true. I finally decided to run a test with separate addresses and found I was able to send to 200 individual recipients in one group email.

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I'm puzzled by your choice of words.

  • 200 individual recipients
  • one group email

What is a "group email"?

Modified by Zenos

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A group email? Just an email to multiple recipients. to a group rather than to a single individual. Does my previous reply still not make sense?

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"My ISP says it doesn't impose a limit on the number of recipients" What ISP please.

And the exact text of the error message (Verbatim)

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OK, so it was one email message with many discrete addressees. Often, users say "group" referring to features found in Outlook, similar to Mailing Lists in Thunderbird. Given that "group" can have such a specific connotation, it's useful to know exactly how you are using it.

The limit mentioned in my link is a bit mysterious. You'll notice it says "appears" and "approximately" as if it's an empirical discovery rather than by intimate knowledge of the underlying code. My guess is that there is a fixed-size buffer allocated to storing addresses which will only hold so many characters. Maybe this theory is incorrect. Maybe the buffer got bigger. :-S

What we do know is that Mailing Lists are successful where Thunderbird does complain about too many addresses.

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It's HIGHLY unlikely the reason my test email limit turned out to be 200 recipients because of a fixed-size buffer that just happened to coincide with that number. Much more likely they just say "approximately 60" in their help file notes to discourage spamming.

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Well, no, because 4 or 5 times a year, someone writes in with pretty much exactly your question because they too have had a message refused with the "too many recipients" warning. We suggest they use a Mailing List and all is well.