Hi there. I have a discourse forum up and running and yesterday I tried to configure reply_by_email. I found that even without enabling this feature (reply by email enabled setting) but only entering a reply by email address I broke regular email sending (notifications about new replies, activation emails). The /logs page is empty, so I have no idea want goes wrong. Can you point me how to investigate this issue? Discourse version v1.9.0.beta2 +56

Well, after a lot of trials and errors I found a solution for my problem: not to use %{reply_key} in reply by email address. When I used email like forum-reply+%{reply_key}@domain.tld emails were not sent at all, and there were no any logs about that. So I’m confusing, why is a suggestion of adding %{reply_key} is there in the hint?

Hi, Matt. It means that no emails are sent at all. Neither activation emails for new users, nor notifications about topic updated to active users.

Check the email debugging document. I’d guess that the reply to address you added is not one that your mail delivery service accepts.

Because if you want the reply to go to the right topic that it’s in reply to, that key is necessary. What mail delivery service are you using? It’s odd that it would not deliver mail with a +XXX address. It’s not Discourse’s fault that your mail transfer agent silently throws away mail if it doesn’t like the sender address. It can’t know that your mailing will throw them away. The logs that you seek are at your mail delivery service, not Discourse.

Well, I checked email sources and found that even without %{reply_key} there were headers like these: From: ForumN Reply-To: Discoursesds To: user@ya.ru Message-ID: In-Reply-To: References: So after replying to that mail, the reply goes to the correct topic. I’m using Yandex as a delivery service and sadly I can’t access their logs. But anyway I can’t understand where email address with reply_key goes to: from header, reply-to header or somewhere else? Is there any example of email generated by discourse for such notifications (with the ability to reply by email)?

Configuring reply_by_email breaks regular email sending

Product Support

mpalmer (Matt Palmer) June 16, 2017, 5:15am 2

The first step in investigation is to understand the problem. What does “broke” mean, exactly?

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Reply by email address broken Bug	7	1225	November 18, 2022
Issue configuring reply by email: 553 5.7.1 Sender address rejected: not owned by user Product Support	6	12913	June 13, 2019
Notifications incompatibles avec le reply by email Product Support	7	276	February 25, 2026
Reply by email not working (but I'm able to verify each component is working as it should...) Product Support	0	537	January 28, 2021
How %{reply_key} create? Product Support	6	2499	August 16, 2018

Configuring reply_by_email breaks regular email sending

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