RFC5322
“Friendly From” addresses
When we’re looking at the technical details of email addresses there are two quite different contexts we talk about.
Read MoreDon’t break the (RFC) rules
It looks like Microsoft are getting pickier about email address syntax, rejecting mail that uses illegal address formats. That might be what’s causing that “550 5.6.0 CAT.InvalidContent.Exception: DataSourceOperationException, proxyAddress: prefix not supported – ; cannot handle content of message” rejection.
Read MoreFriendly email addresses
Most of the time when we’re talking about email addresses, we’re talking about the actual user@domain format that’s used to send mail over the wire, but that’s not how we most often see them. When they’re used in a To: or From: header they’re usually associated with a display name – the “real name” of the user with the associated email address. In the From: field that’s often called the “friendly from”, but the syntax used in the To:, Cc: and Bcc: fields is identical.
The display name is important, as it’s shown more in mail clients than the actual email address is. Some mobile clients don’t display the email address at all, just the display name.
There are three ways you can put an email address in a header field.
The best way is to wrap the email address itself in angle brackets, and put the display name in front of it.