Sending, receiving, and organizing email in Outlook.com
The rejection shown is from the recipient side: 554 5.7.1 ... Sender domain rejected. That means the receiving mail system is refusing the message, and the recipient’s provider decides whether to accept it.
Based on the symptoms and the headers shown, the most relevant checks are:
- Send a plain test message with no PDF, no links, no images, and no signature.
- If that succeeds, the message content or attachment is contributing to the spam decision.
- Avoid sending the PDF as a direct attachment.
- Outlook blocks some attachment types for safety, and for files that trigger filtering, the recommended alternative is to save the file to OneDrive and send a link instead.
- Another supported alternative is to compress the file into a
.zipbefore sending.
- If the message is going to a group or mailing list, review the recipient addresses.
- Remove any old or invalid addresses from the group.
- If the rejection mentions blocking, blacklist terms, or the recipient server intentionally blocking the message, contact the support team for the recipient’s email provider and request that the account or domain be unblocked.
- If Outlook.com delivery problems continue and they are specific to Outlook.com addresses such as
@outlook.com,@hotmail.com,@live.com, or@msn.com, use the Outlook.com sender support troubleshooting form. - If the account is being treated as suspicious for sending, check whether the account may be compromised and review recent sending activity.
Because this started recently and now affects multiple recipients, the most practical end-to-end test is:
- first send a short plain-text email to the same recipient,
- then send the same message with no attachment but with the recipient list,
- then replace the PDF attachment with a OneDrive link.
If plain text works but the PDF version fails, keep using a OneDrive link or .zip for the file. If even plain text fails, the recipient provider is likely blocking the sender/domain and the unblock path is with that provider or Outlook.com sender support for Outlook.com destinations.