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How to deal with bouncing members in Yahoo! Groups

NOTE: Help for the NEW Yahoo Groups is in green font.

Why do Members "Bounce"?

If messages sent to a member are consistently returned to Yahoo! Groups with an error, that member is considered "bouncing." His/her Yahoo! Groups account is deactivated, and group messages won’t be delivered to the account.

The most usual cause of bouncing is that a member has changed his/her email address (or habitually uses a different address) and has forgotten to change it for YG email messages. Usually the simplest solution is for the member to rejoin the group, making the request from his/her new email address.

NOTE: Messages you send to a bouncing member through the YG will not arrive. You must contact the member outside the group.

Members may also manually reactivate their accounts by visiting their My Groups page and changing to their new address.

Having bouncing members doesn't really affect your group, but a member may want to stay in the group and has forgotten that his/her address has changed and is complaining to you that they are not receiving messages from the YG e-list. Please go to Tutorial 2 to understand what to do in this case.

Managing Bouncing Alerts in the New Yahoo Groups

1. To find out if members are bouncing, sign into your Yahoo Group on the Web. On the group home page , go to >Management >Manage Members >Bouncing  (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

2. Check the posting privileges for your group as a whole, to be sure the default policy allows members to post (Figure 2). Also see Settings in Yahoo Groups. To check on a specific member, click on the box to the left of his/her name.

Figure 2.

3. Double-click on any member to check their bouncing status in the Edit Member window (Figure 3). You can >Send Reactivation Request from this window using the button under Bouncing Status.

Figure 3.

Handling Bouncing Members in Old YG

This tutorial tells what to do when you discover bouncing email addresses in your Member / Bounce list. For what to do about participants who contact moderators about problems with their group emails, see Bouncing Members - Helping Participants.

Yahoo Groups gives moderators excellent tools for

• knowing which members' emails are bouncing <-- read about this
• diagnosing the likely reasons for the bounces <-- read about this
• reinstating members in case the reason for the bounce is only temporary <-- read about this
• removing members whose email is assumed to be no longer working <-- read about this

To find out which members are bouncing, sign in to your Yahoo! Group and click on Members in the left sidebar (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Viewing Bouncing Members page

On the Members page (Figure 4), click on the Bouncing tab to get a list of members whose email has been bouncing. Under Bouncing Status, the 4th column, you can click on View History to get details and more tools for dealing with the problem.

Note: bouncing members might appear in both your Members and Bouncing list -- or they might be in the Bouncing list only and not listed as Members. Both ways can be confusing.

• If you look at the Members list, you won't be able to see who's bouncing (and might assume all addresses listed are working)
• When bouncing members don't appear in your Members list then this might also be confusing ... until it occurs to you to look for them in the Bouncing Members list.

Reasons for Bounces & What to Do

On the Bouncing Members page, click on View History to see how many bounces occurred and Yahoo's actions (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Bounce History page: Hard bouncing member has had 5 automatic reactivation requests

On the Bounce History page (Figure 5) you can see the following information:

• The member has been HARD bouncing.
• Farther down the page under Recent Bounced Messages we see there have been five automatic reactivation requests, Yahoo's limit (and the dates). Keep in mind that, because members might be enrolled in more than one group, not all the activity listed necessarily pertains to your group.
• The Last Bounced Message is particularly useful. This is the text of the message returned by the e-mail server that failed to deliver the e-mail. The message above says that this account has been disabled or discontinued, which suggests that you can remove this member from your group, but not all messages are so straightforward.
• To interpret any message, simply copy a portion of it and paste that text into a Google search field (the number and type of error will probably be productive e.g. '554 delivery error'). This will help you to judge whether to persist in retaining this member or not.
• Here you can use the Remove Member button if you think their email addresses are permanently inactive--but see below.

If you think the delivery failure is only temporary, you can send another reactivation request by clicking the Send Reactivation Request button. 

• This causes YahooGroups to send an email to the address with the delivery problem explaining that there has been a problem which has caused YahooGroups to put that email address on bounce status and giving the recipient instructions for rectifying the problem (assuming that the participant is able to receive the message).
• You (or any moderator of a group in which that address is enrolled) can send ONE reactivation request a day. If you have not sent such a request but YahooGroups reports that a Reactivation Request has been sent already that day, then probably a moderator of another group in which that member is enrolled has sent such a request.
• If the recipient receives the message and takes the necessary action, then Yahoo takes that address off its bounce list and reinstates that member to active status for any groups with which that email address is associated.
• If the mail bounces, then Yahoo makes no change to status, but reports any error message in such a way that you can see those messages.
• If the mail doesn't bounce yet the recipient takes no action, then Yahoo allows you to Reinstate that member, but only after there has been no bounce for FIVE days. You can then restore the member to active status by clicking on the Reactivate button which appears on this screen after 5 days have elapsed.

If you think the delivery failure is permanent, you click the button at the top right to Remove Member.

NOTE: Please remember, it doesn't hurt to have bouncing members in your Group, unless they have complained to you that they are not receiving messages from the YG e-list. Please go to Tutorial 2 to understand what to do in this case.

   EVO is a project of TESOL's CALL IS

Originally prepared by V. Stevens, http://www.vancestevens.com/vance.htm, updated August 20, 2005.

Other tutorials by V. Stevens: http://www.homestead.com/prosites-vstevens/files/efi/tutorials/tutorlist.htm

Updated by M. Akaddar, September 2013.

Revised by E. Hanson-Smith, 22 September 2013.