- Reason for getting a bounce back error message when sending an email from outlook “message has lines too long for transport” It is most likely because Outlook is not configured to correctly wrap the sentences within the email.
- Long lines can be difficult to read in the emails, as such it is considered proper email etiquette to break the lines of your messages to somewhere between 90 and 100 characters, Also When you wrap long lines of text, the Outlook email client automatically breaks sentences away from the current line to start on a new line. This will shorten the length of all outgoing emails and is similar to narrowing the margins of the writing space. Outlook has a useful setting to set the line wrap to whatever number is needed
Step 1. Open Outlook and go to the File menu and Select Options.
Step 2. Within Outlook Options, select Mail.
Step 3. Scroll down to Message format.
-In Automatically wrap text at character, enter a number to indicate where you want Outlook to wrap text.
-Set characters to 90.
-Select OK to apply the changes and close the window.
Need more help with the email accounts on your 1-grid web hosting account? Visit the email category of our knowledge base.
Updated on April 12, 2023
Was this article helpful?
Related Articles
If you see the error “Message has lines too long for transport” in Outlook, it’s likely because the email client isn’t configured to wrap sentences correctly, especially for HTML-formatted emails. Wrapping long lines of text is important in email etiquette, as long lines can be difficult to read.
To improve the readability of your emails, it’s recommended to break lines to around 65-70 characters. Outlook’s email client automatically breaks long sentences and starts them on a new line when lines are wrapped. This reduces the length of outgoing emails and makes them easier to read. You can easily configure the line wrap setting in Outlook to any number you prefer.
How to automatically wrap long lines in Outlook
Open Outlook and go to the File menu.
Select Options.
within Outlook Options, select Mail.
- Scroll down to Message format.
- In Automatically wrap text at character, enter a number to indicate where you want Outlook to wrap text. Keep this between 65 and 70 characters.
- Select OK to apply the changes and close the window.
What version of OpenCart are you reporting this for?
3.0.3.8
Describe the bug
Order mails are not being sent with the mailserver rejecting them for «message has lines too long for transport» in accordance with RFC5322 and RFC2822.
To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:
- Order anything.
- Receive no mail.
- Notice the error in the mail sending log
Expected behavior
The order mail being sent normally
Mail Log
2021-11-15 15:59:54 1mmdSc-0007cW-Q0 <= xxx@xxx.nl U=user P=local S=13397 T=»Shopname — Order 10″ from xxx@xxx.nl for yyy@yyy.com
2021-11-15 15:59:54 1mmdSc-0007cW-Q0 ** yyy@yyy.com F=xxx@xxx.nl R=smart_route T=remote_smtp: message has lines too long for transport
2021-11-15 15:59:54 1mmdSc-0007cW-Q0 Completed
Server / Test environment:
- Deployed and live on a shared hosting.
- Apache2 2.4.51
- PHP 7.3.32
- Exim 4.95
Additional context
Nothing was modified in the OC installation to have caused this. This is a standard/default installation when it comes to mail.
The host has recently updated Exim, and according to them and the changelog it enables line length limit by default. Any mail sent through the server that isn’t OpenCart is sent without a problem.
Skip to content
After upgrading to exim 4.95 or exim 4.96, you may receive “Message has lines too long for transport” error after sending email.
Possible Cause: Message content has very long line. Probably HTML.
Possible Solution:
sed -i "s/message_linelength_limit = .*/message_linelength_limit = 2048000/" /etc/exim.conf systemctl restart exim
or change message_linelength_limit value in /etc/exim.conf
Best Soluton:
Shrink emails’ HTML lines. You can use \n to split long lines. Exim 4.94 had no problem by the way.
This looks like the best and easiest solution.
(The default value of message_linelength_limit is 998)
I don’t believe this is a cPanel issue, as exim_outgoing.conf is used by MailScanner.
I also don’t believe this is a MailScanner issue; more likely a problem with a sender’s mail client.
(Try a recursive grep of «exim_outgoing.conf» in /var/cpanel and see what it shows you. Most results are calls to the log daemon. Pipe that into another grep excluding «log_rotation» and there are only a couple of entries.)
So far as the value
not being kept or updated in exim_outgoing.conf
I’d check WHM’s Exim config manager GUI and verify your customized value is retained after saving changes.
(You should also see the value in /etc/exim.conf.localopts, as cPanel stores customized values there and uses it to build the actual exim.conf.)
exim_outgoing.conf is a slightly modified copy of exim.conf used by MailScanner. Yes, there are a couple of minor differences between the two — such as exim.conf’s router section deferring action to MailScanner; having the same commands in MailScanner’s copy would just cause an endless loop) — but the smtp transport section should be identical, so your customized number should be the same in both files.
The relevant config line is «message_linelegth_limit», which should be shown in two sections of both exim.conf and exim_outgoing.conf:
- remote_smtp
- dkim_remote_smtp
If modified from cPanel’s default of 2048, it should also appear once in exim.conf.localopts, with whatever value you set in the GUI.
FWIW, I do note that in the GUI, the tooltip for that setting indicates a range from 1 to 1,000,000, so if you’re setting a value larger than the high end, it’s possible cPanel is resetting your «out of bounds» number back to its default value of 2048. However, that still shouldn’t cause it to be different between exim.conf and exim_outgoing.conf
In any event, besides the fact that cPanel doesn’t seem to allow such a large value, setting the max line length to more than a million seems way more than you’d actually need. That would imply an attachment is being sent, and the sender’s email client is not properly MIME-encoding the message, as lines longer than 76 characters are supposed to have «soft breaks» inserted.
See RFC 2045 ( https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt ) for more info on encoding in general, and 6.7(5) for detail on quoted-printable encoding.
Good luck getting your issue sorted out!