Forum Discussion
Office 2021 Outlook profile email account settings - server names have appended a "." to the name.
Thank you, Charles, for the reply!
A couple of things to share; many of your recommendations are things I had already tried following suggestions that CoPilot had made (i.e. rebuilt profile, cache flushing, registry pruning, etc.), none of which helped as the dot ALWAYS reemerged.
I was finally able to get my SMTP blockage resolved with support from a Xfinity tech who determined that an automated system integrity mechanism had improperly blocked an entire range of IP addresses that my ISP was using, with mine caught up in it. Once that had been removed (and that security mechanism adjusted to prevent a recurrence) my access to SMTP was restored. This was in spite of the fact that Outlook is still appending a dot to the end of the pop server name. I did ask him if that was what was causing all these problems and he told me "no", it's irrelevant.
Hopefully this won't recur again but I also learned that Xfinity is in the process of outsourcing their email services to Yahoo and have begun converting their customers over to Yahoo servers. So, in the long run this issue with Xfinity will just go away (to be replaced by Yahoo issues???). ;-)
Thanks again!
Jonathan
The recurring issue with an extra trailing dot being appended to the POP server name in Outlook is related to how Outlook and Windows handle fully qualified domain names (FQDNs). In DNS standards, a trailing dot signifies an absolute domain name, but many mail servers, including Xfinity’s, do not expect or properly handle this syntax. Outlook’s internal DNS resolution or profile management sometimes automatically adds this trailing dot when saving settings, especially if the profile data is corrupted or cached improperly. This behavior causes conflicts with Xfinity’s anti-spam measures, leading to blocks on your SMTP access.
To fix the issue, the best approach is to recreate your Outlook profile from scratch, manually entering the server names without the trailing dot to ensure clean configuration. Additionally, consider flushing your DNS cache and resetting your network settings to avoid stale or corrupted data affecting name resolution. Using an external DNS server like Google’s or Cloudflare’s may help prevent unwanted automatic changes. If problems persist, temporarily using the SMTP server’s IP address instead of its hostname or modifying your local hosts file to control resolution can be effective workarounds. Ultimately, keeping Outlook fully updated and checking with Xfinity for any whitelisting options are recommended to minimize service disruptions.
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Thank you, Charles, for the reply!
A couple of things to share; many of your recommendations are things I had already tried following suggestions that CoPilot had made (i.e. rebuilt profile, cache flushing, registry pruning, etc.), none of which helped as the dot ALWAYS reemerged.
I was finally able to get my SMTP blockage resolved with support from a Xfinity tech who determined that an automated system integrity mechanism had improperly blocked an entire range of IP addresses that my ISP was using, with mine caught up in it. Once that had been removed (and that security mechanism adjusted to prevent a recurrence) my access to SMTP was restored. This was in spite of the fact that Outlook is still appending a dot to the end of the pop server name. I did ask him if that was what was causing all these problems and he told me "no", it's irrelevant.
Hopefully this won't recur again but I also learned that Xfinity is in the process of outsourcing their email services to Yahoo and have begun converting their customers over to Yahoo servers. So, in the long run this issue with Xfinity will just go away (to be replaced by Yahoo issues???). ;-)
Thanks again!
Jonathan