02 Aug 1993 | Print  |

Header Quibble

by Adam C. Engst

Header Quibble - I've noticed a bunch of failures from the fileserver recently, and in most cases, the failure stems from a strange header, most commonly the information in the From: line. Many people put their names in the From: line along with the email address. That's fine, but if you include your full name, department, organization, and telephone number the email address ends up wrapped down to the second line where the fileserver software can't find it. Try putting extended contact information in a signature instead. Also, try to avoid commas or quotes in your name since email programs tend to spit up over them. In an ideal world, your email would have a single From: line looking something like this:

From: Ferdinand The Bull <bull@cork.com>

Some people use QuickMail gateways that like to duplicate the internal From: line in a pseudo-header below the Internet header. These requests fail because the pseudo-header does not contain the correct Internet address. If you can prevent that pseudo-header from appearing, the fileserver will work better for you.

I realize that you may not know how to change your name in the From: line in your mailer, but if you have trouble receiving files from the fileserver, fixing your From: line will increase your chances of success, and I'll see fewer bounces. Everyone wins.

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