problem with Cc: and Bcc: in mail()

[Melville]

I am sending a mail message that should have a Cc: and a Bcc:.

The mail arrives for the intended recipient and has the correct email address in the Cc: line of the delivered email, but the Cc: copy never arrives. Nor does the Bcc: copy.

I even tried including the Cc: address in the send-to field (comma-delimited, of course). Again, the delivered email showed both addresses in the To: line, but only the first one arrived.

According to the documentation, a line cannot exceed 70 characters. Does this mean 70 characters before each \r\n, or 70 characters including the \r\n and all other characters for however many lines there are?

Any suggestions on why the emails aren't arriving?

Thanks,
Mel

[bradgrafelman]

Hum. "\r\n" is the line ender, but I'm not sure if that increases the character count on the line by 2 or not. I would guess not.

Paste some code for us to look at; I'm assuming you're using mail(), so paste your mail() line (and include the additional headers you're using).

[Melville]

Here is the code:

$extra_header_stuff = "From: [e-mail]\r\n";
$email_address = $to_email;
if ($from_email) $email_address .= "," . $from_email;
$extra_header_stuff .= "Bcc: [e-mail]\r\n";
$mailsend = mail($email_address, $subject, $mail_body, $extra_header_stuff);

It gets to $to_email, but not to $from_email or [e-mail]

[bradgrafelman]

Are you sure $from_email is set correctly?

If it's succesfully sending the message, then it certainly should be using the extra headers. Does the email say it's from ([e-mail]) like it should?

Also, remove the trailing line break:

$extra_header_stuff .= "Bcc: [e-mail]\r\n"; 

changes to:

$extra_header_stuff .= "Bcc: [e-mail]"; 

and see if that does anything.

If none of the above work, try changing '\r\n' to '\n', as noted by PHP.net that "Some poor quality Unix mail transfer agents replace LF by CRLF automatically...".

If it still doesn't work... we might need someone else's opinion :o

[Melville]

Thank you, Brad. $from_email is set correctly. I have echo'd it to make sure, plus I see it in the primary copy of the email. But still no other copies. I had already tried the \r\n to \n, but that had no effect. I have made the change you suggested, but there is no change in the behavior. I do notice that when I put both emails on the main recipient list, they are separated by a semi-colon in the To: line of the email I receive, although I am putting a comma between them.

I'm stumped on this one.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Best,
Mel

[bradgrafelman]

Yes, I noticed your use of a comma, and even questioned it myself, though PHP.net's manual page on [man]mail/man uses a comma in their example, so it doesn't seem as though that would be wrong 😉

I'm equally stumped. You didn't answer my other question though; you had set a From: address as an additional header. Is this working? On the e-mail you receive, does the From: line indicate such?

Also; try to run a normal mail() command using the Bcc: address you're trying as the To: address. Just send a short, simple test message, subject test, etc. MAYBE the remote server is blocking the mail, or the mail server is refusing to send it, etc. etc. Who knows.

EDIT: I uploaded the code you first posted to one of my remote Unix servers... it worked fine. I got the e-mail in the 2 from mailboxes, and also in the Bcc: address (as a Bcc message). All addresses were separate mailboxes. My guess is that your mailserver does not support Bcc, it is disabled, etc. etc.

Use [man]phpinfo/man and tell me how your server is configured to send mail (should be in the first block of information).