Email Address Error

When updating or adding an email address to a CommTrak record, you may see a warning message:

Note: Email address is incomplete or email domain name does not exist. Try again?

The error is shown in the screenshot below (example from Customer Contact record):

The message indicates that there is a problem with the email address that has been entered into the Email field.

Possible causes of the error include:

• Malformed email address
• Unregistered domain name
• No email server associated with the domain name
• Incorrectly configured email server associated with the domain name

Malformed Email Address

If an invalidly-formed email address is provided, CommTrak will not allow it to be saved.

For example:

• no @ symbol in the email address
• Leading or trailing full-stop character
• Other invalid character in the email address

Please ensure that the email address you entered is valid.

Unregistered domain name

When the user saves a contact record, CommTrak checks to ensure that the domain name is active (registered). The domain name is the portion of the email address that appears after the @ symbol.

If the domain name is inactive (i.e, it has never been registered, or the registration has expired), CommTrak will display the warning message shown in the above image.

Common Mistakes

Common errors made when entering an email address include:

• Mistyping the domain name; a simple typing error can cause an email address to be invalid.
• Error copying and pasting from an email client (e.g. Outlook); e.g. missing or adding characters to the email address.
• Contact provided an incorrect email address; it is not unknown for organisations to include typographical errors in their email signatures!

Avoiding Errors

The best way to ensure that an email address is valid, is to copy and paste the sender's email address from an email that you have received from the sender. This almost guarantees that the email is valid (almost, because the domain name registration may have expired since the email was sent!)

We advise against copying the email address from the contact's email signature, as this may contain formatting which causes the email address to be invalid.

Copying an Email Address from Outlook

Many email clients, including Outlook, display email addresses in the format <jane.johnson@ultimatesystems>, which requires accurate cutting and pasting or manual editing to remove the delimiting < >  characters. To be sure of only copying the email address, you can click Reply, and then copy the email address from the To box of the reply message (then close the new email message without sending).

You can then paste the valid email address into the CommTrak Contacts Email field.

How to Validate a Domain Name

Enter the domain name (not the whole email address) into a whois web site such as:

• AUDA whois lookup (for .au domain names)
• ICANN whois lookup (includes .com & .net domain names)

The above lookup websites are external sites provided as examples, and do not cover all top-level domain names.

Even if the the domain name has been registered, an email server may not have been configured for that address.

How to Validate an Email Address

The only guaranteed way to prove that an email address is valid, is to send an email to the address, and to see if the recipient responds!

If you are convinced that CommTrak is rejecting a currently-active email address, we recommend that you copy and paste the rejected email address from the CommTrak Contact Email field, and paste it into the To field of a new email message (e.g. in Outlook). Send a message, and if you receive a reply from the recipient, report the issue to CommTrak Support.