“554 Message not allowed” – Email Rejected by Yahoo


I just had a customer contact me asking if I had any idea why his email was being rejected by the Yahoo mailservers (which also deal with all BT addresses).

The rejection message said:

554 Message not allowed – [320] (in reply to end of DATA command)

A quick Google search, and a look at the message that was rejected, told me that the time on the sending machine was wrong – it was set 1 month in the future. It seems Yahoo won’t accept mail sent from the future, so if you are getting similar rejection messages check your system clock!

I hope this helps someone.


25 responses to ““554 Message not allowed” – Email Rejected by Yahoo”

  1. Same.. Thanks. I find it pretty lame that the local computer’s time stamp is used and not the mailserver’s.. But thanks, helped me out.

  2. Thank you! Finally someone with the correct fix for me. I can’t believe it was the clock. Now I can go to bed…

  3. Thanks! Not sure how the date got changed. It was one month in the future. It only caused problems with Yahoo and Bellsouth email accounts.

  4. Thanks for this – saved me possible hours of checking – was only causing a problem with Yahoo email addresses

  5. HI!
    Thanks for the tip.
    I checked my clock settings. Its correct.
    The mail went through to yahoo.co.in addresses, and Gmail & hotmail.
    It got rejected only by yahoo.com. Wonder why !

  6. I have same 554 message not allowed,
    but my computer is perfectly set, not off by even a moment………….but you are certain the 554 msg if from yahoo?

  7. It didn’t help me, but then the error message I got had 299 in the brackets instead of 320. My clock is fine. Now what?

  8. Thanks a ton for sharing this information, that was exactly the solution to my problem.

  9. Fixed my problem too. Had a friend ask me why they couldn’t send emails, kept getting this error and a little googling to find your site fixed it. Only 7 minutes off but I guess enough to cause it to bounce it. Thanks!

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