How to Fix the Unknown address error 554 Message not allowed Error

October 2, 2009 By Paula 108 Comments This post may contain affiliate links.

Last week I started having problems sending emails to Yahoo email addresses. This started to become quite annoying and was starting to affect my online business. Whenever I sent an email it would bounce back and I would get the following message sent back:

5.1.0 – Unknown address error 554-‘Message not allowed – [320]’

I scoured the net looking for a solution but everyone kept saying that it was the ISP’s fault and that I should contact them to fix it. The only problem was that I didn’t really think it was my ISP’s problem only because I could send emails perfectly with my laptop. The problem only seemed to be occurring on my desktop PC.

But I emailed the support section of my internet service provider anyway just in case they knew something I didn’t. It wasn’t surprising when they came back and said that they couldn’t see a problem at their end.

So I put up with the problem for another few days and finally got my brother (who knows a lot more about computers than I do) to take a look.

Within a few minutes he had solved the problem and it was so simple. The date on my computer had been changed at some point and was showing a month ahead. This would have meant that any emails that I sent out would have been date stamped a month in the future. Obviously the Yahoo mail system doesn’t like this and so it bounced back my emails.

So problem solved and I am back to sending emails again.

Hopefully this will help anyone with the same problem.

About Paula

Paula is the owner of this site and loves working online. She loves pina coladas and walking in the rain...as long as she has an umbrella and a raincoat and maybe some gumboots. Actually she'd rather just stay inside on rainy days with a hot chocolate and her computer checking stats and working on websites.

Thanks…I had the same problem and you helped me solve it!
:)

Paula says:

October 17, 2009 at 6:44 pm

Glad I could help Linda. It is an annoying little problem but thankfully the fix is a simple one.

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- Jo says:
  
  February 23, 2010 at 8:27 am
  
  Me too – found thie article swiftly and it resolved my issue.
  
  many thanks :)
  
  Reply
  - Nathaniel says:
    
    August 14, 2010 at 3:57 pm
    
    Yes, I had a dos game that keeps fiddling with my windows clock; didn’t realize it could have an effect on mail too. Thanks!
    
    Reply
- Russ says:
  
  December 3, 2010 at 9:31 am
  
  THANKS FOR THE FIX… It worked for me too
  
  Reply
- Alice says:
  
  October 22, 2011 at 2:26 pm
  
  Thanks so much. You helped me correct my problem too!
  
  Reply
Stefan says:

February 18, 2010 at 1:50 pm

Thank you – the problem drove me nuts! Now I’m able to send mails again! Yi-Haa

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Roni says:

October 12, 2010 at 12:33 pm

Thank you my dear, I have the same problem !!!
Thanks a lot !!!
Roni

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Pratheesh says:

April 28, 2011 at 11:22 am

Thanks Dude. Even I faced the same problem.

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julian says:

December 5, 2011 at 3:35 am

cheers mate, problem solved!!!!

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I’ve been having a problem with returned emails for weeks – Tiscali were no help so I was thinking of setting up a different email. Have just reset the date which was a few days out and all seems good – so many thanks.

Paula says:

October 18, 2009 at 5:31 pm

Great to see your problem has been fixed Jan. My ISP were no help either – they had no idea what the problem was.

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THANK YOU – computer problems can be a bit intimidating and your solution was concise and clear. Thanks so much. :-)

Paula says:

November 13, 2009 at 5:58 pm

Thanks for the feedback Kate…much appreciated.

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Change of date – that was it ! great thanks,

Paula says:

January 3, 2010 at 6:24 am

No worries, glad we could help.

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Too funny – been dealing with this for a couple weeks now and just tonight decided to google the error – much thanks for the cure – now if I could figure out how the date got changed in the first place?? ;0)

Paula says:

January 3, 2010 at 6:25 am

Yes good question Rob. It’s not like anyone uses my computer and I don’t mess around with the date so not sure how mine got changed.

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You saved my life…I knew my 3 year old nephew had to do something to it. I saw him with the calendar open…thanks again.

Paula says:

January 10, 2010 at 7:30 am

Great to see it fixed the problem for you Darlene.

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thank you, thank you ! SBC/ATT wanted me to reinstall outlook !! It was a silly little date change!

Paula says:

January 19, 2010 at 12:53 am

My isp had no idea either…and it’s such a simple thing.

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You are awesome! I was pulling my hair out!!
Thanks so much for the simple fix!

Paula says:

January 28, 2010 at 2:49 pm

No problem, it was definitely a fix worth sharing.

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This problem has been driving me mad and puzzling my computer guru. You seem to have solved it. The clock on my computer was saying “June” instead of “February”! Thank you so much.

Paula says:

February 3, 2010 at 6:05 pm

It’s just one of those annoying things that could take a month of Sundays to figure out. Glad it fixed your problem.

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Fixed the problem. Thanks…

-Phil

Paula says:

February 10, 2010 at 5:56 pm

Excellent – good to see it is helping people out.

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wow! Thanks…I use my email for business too and I just had a rash of returns. I searched for the error message and came up with this…and yup, it’s February and my computer is somehow set for June…

Paula says:

February 10, 2010 at 5:57 pm

Great to see it worked for you Joe.

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thank you so much that fixed my problem.
Love the solution short and sweet
thanks

Paula says:

February 13, 2010 at 6:18 pm

Yes, definitely! It would have to be one of the simplest fixes ever.

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Thanks a lot!
Simple fix, very useful.
Greetings from Brazil.

Thank you for posting this! I had the same problem and noticed last night that my incoming emails were coming from the ‘future’ (it was 10pm, incoming emails on my laptop were saying 11pm). Then, today, I noticed that my clock was a month ahead on my laptop.

When I cut & paste the message error in google, your site was the first to pop up & I am glad it did. It was an easy fix!

Thanks again!
.-= Shannon Ensor´s last blog ..$282000 MLS® 5922 Mesa Verde Circle =-.

Paula says:

March 5, 2010 at 12:14 am

Nice to see we are ranking no.1 in Google for the error message. When I first had the problem, I had trouble finding a solution to it in Google.

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Thanks a lot paula. Got the problem solved very easily because of your help. Thanks once again.

Thanks so much for your fix. Googled the error message and found your post. I’ve been round and round with ATT.Yahoo and Outlook Express online and could not find what was wrong. The date change did the trick. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thanks a lot….it just solved the problem in one shot….!!

Thanks a ton again…!!

Problem solved! Thanks so much!

THANKS!!!!! After hours of trying to get technical support because I thought my problem was due to a switch that I made in service I grew frustrated and googled my error message. Much to my surprise after reading your comment I solved my problem. THANKS!

OMG!!!!!! THANK GOD I found this blog. I was ready to through my notebook out the window! My 4 year was playing games on my computer and I NEVER thought that the emails were being bounced back because of the date! You are a lifesaver! UGH…..what a pain in the neck. LOL…..Thank you again SO much!

Incredible. Thank you…. so simple, your a lifesaver ! I was ready to take my compter in until I came across this

Hey,
It worked…. Awesome…. Thanks…. Now I don’t have to spend 2 hours on the phone with Dell….

I was comunicating with my son’s mother about important school work, suddenly messages started to bounce back. I spent 1 1/2 on the phone with my provider and yahoo with no luck. But curious to know who changed my time & date???
Lucky i came across this, thank you very much! Things are back to normal.

Wow! Thanks so much. I tried calling internet provider which gave me no help. On to Microsoft–they said they would fix it for $60. The best advice is free thanks to you. Thanks a bunch.

Thanks… as a client was complaining that their email was bouncing. It’s always good to know it’s a simple fix on their end.

Glad I came across this page. My initial thought was that Yahoo had blacklisted the server for some reason but then this page made me realise that I had accidentally set the clock 3 months in the future. Nice simple fix – thank you:)

Fantastic…….You have just saved me hours of work!

Thank you SO much! I didn’t realize the date had changed on my computer. This is very helpful.

another big thanks for posting this time-saver.

Thanks a lot, I had the same problem. I tried sending an email 5 different ways because I thought it was a spam filter problem.

What I want to know is why the return error message can’t have any useful information in it! I’m an IT guy and this was totally obscure to me.

Thank you for sharing this information!! I also tried to send one mail multiple times without success (and the receiver offended as I was not replying :-( ). I did not even notice that the date had changed until I read your information….thanks again!

Thanks so much for this! Really helpful… :)

Thanks. Saved me from an hour of problem solving and headache. Great article.

Thank you SO much! I can’t believe it was that easy but that was the problem! You are my HERO!!!!

Wanda says:

September 14, 2010 at 9:29 pm

LOL. Thank you. It’s nice to know that so many people have been helped with this solution.

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My calendar date was off by one day – Yahoo is sure missing the boat here by not explaining a simple thing like that.

Every thank you it work for me. yes it simple and also we are over look it.

GREAT.Thanks a lot.Its so simple.I was really struggling from past 3 days finding out the solution.Finally this helped me out.

Thanks for posting the fix. Not allowing an incorrect date to hose up the email is just to paranoid and/or anal. Those server weenies need to lighten up a bit.

Many thanks saved me a load of grief

Same here. It worked. Thanks for saving me tons of time and hassle.

I would have never solved this problem if not for this post. Thanks so much!

Over a year later and you are still helping :-)

Thanks so much for posting this you saved me £120 for tech support.

Very very grateful

“Hopefully this will help anyone with the same problem.” You appear to have helped so many people! Thank you.

Thanks! I was having the same problem and just fixed it with your suggestion. Thanks!

Thank you for sharing the solution to my email problem. My date was off also. It is now fixed!

This often happens because people use their Windows Calendar to view a future date. If you view a different month or click on a day, and then close it with OK, you have changed the date.

Thanks it solved my problem.

Thank you So MUCH! I was about to lose it. This was the issue. I will more closely observe my 2 year old’s playing on my comp.

Ha! I see I’m not the only one with toddlers that randomly click stuff on the computer. So simple, thanks for the fix!

Thanks for posting this, was looking at dates next weekend and must have set the date to then.

This also solved my issue. Thanks a lot for this post

Thanks this has solved my problem too but wonder if you could help with another one – the date on my laptop keeps moving forward on its own – it was showing 01.06.11 just now – it normally goes forward but on 2 occasions it has also gone back to Aug 2010 – any idea why it does this and how I can solve?

Thankyou so MUCH..!
Googled the problem.
This solved my issue within 5 minutes of experiencing the problem. Would have been pulling my hair out for weeks otherwise trying to figure it out.
Someone should configure a pop up notice to appear every time system date is altered.

Thank you so much this fixed my problem too!

Well Done for putting up this fix which worked for me too. Foud it at he top of the Google list so it’s a very common problem with a very simple solution – if you know it! Now all those who have posted a reply do and countless others who have not.

wow, exactly solved my problem! thanks a lot!

Genius! Thanks.

Thank you so very much. This has save dme heaps of stress and worry. You ROCK!!!

i have SAME problem, but my date and time are perfectly correct. darn….BUT WAS A GREAT TIP ANYWAY!

but, i’m glad that your problem was so easily fixed and how great you were able to help others.

I had a customer call in with this problem (Yahoo bouncing messages back). I had him read the error number and message, Googled it, found the answer on your blog, had the customer check his computer’s date, then correct the date, and voila, problem solved in about the time it took me to write this run on sentence.

Thank you for saving me from an hour or more of troubleshooting!

Paula says:

September 28, 2011 at 7:51 pm

Excellent Glen. Don’t you just love the internet for solving these sorts of problems. If your customer had looked themselves they might have found it without even having to ring you.

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Thanks! You’re a life saver!

Thank you very much – I was pulling my hair out. Why are computers so dum that they can’t solve this kind of problem themselves?
Michael

Kudos for posting this. You solved a very vexing problem.

Like everyone else, many thanks for this simply fix. I was check dates of a future trip and forgot to reset my clock. Funny how message for 2012 get missed….lol

Thank You! I had the right year but was a week ahead. Was starting to drive me nuts. THANKS!

Thanks a bunch mate. I could have been going at this for hours if i had not found this post.
Thank you!

Brilliant! Thank you so much. But how is it that the clock jumps a month I wonder. Very grateful for the help.

Glen says:

January 2, 2012 at 9:45 pm

This often happens because people use their Windows Calendar to view a future date. If you view a different month or click on a day, and then close it with OK, you have changed the date.

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Waaaa, I wish that was my problem but my computer says the correct
date and time. I have several yahoo accounts and all are working but one and every email I send on the one comes back with this:

Remote host said: 554 Message not allowed –

Rachel says:

January 2, 2012 at 11:14 pm

I wanted to add that this is just yahoo to yahoo emails that are not working. If I send to others, like hotmail, the emails go through. I have contacted Yahoo and will let you know what they say and if they have a solution that will help. I sure hope so!

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Thanks. Email bouncing back was really getting me wound up! Such a simple thing too. Anyway, I would still be getting mad if I hadn’t come across your page.

OMG! You fixed it!

Thanks for reporting. I had the same problem with a customer.

You rock. Totally. God only knows how on earth my date was set one month ahead but that was the problem.

I started having one other problem last night, Facebook won’t keep me logged in and won’t let me log in at all from Internet Explorer, but Firefox works. Since both problems started at the same time, I’m wondering if the date thing is responsible for both.

But thank you so very much for this.

YES, fixing the date fixed the facebook login problem too. I’m SO glad I googled this before wasting any more time, many thanks!

Thank You for posting the fix. Greetings from Germany

Thanks! Mine was set a week ahead.

Yes thats all that was wrong with mine. Kept getting xtra/yahoo emails sent back to me. Just had to put the date right. and thats what was up with my facebook login as well.