1.) What shows up in the "To:" field when he attempts to reply?

2.) What is he using to read & reply to the form-generated emails—a desktop client like Outlook or something web-based?

Related to question #2 above, where is the error message coming from? Does he send the mail and it bounces (gets returned as undeliverable) with an error message in the body, or is the error happening when he tries to send the mail?

Digi

urgh!...he rambled about receiving the email from the contact form and trying to respond to it...said something about an error and that the computer would attempt to try sending several times then give up...

given the fact that he wants me to come to his house where his computer is to go thru his images and burn them to cd myself because he has no clue about it, i'm dealing with a very technically challenged soul ...

i'm assuming he's getting the email, hitting 'reply' to it and having a problem...and, never having received the results of a form in an email personally, i'm not certain this would/should work...i rather doubt it...

so, after further thought, i think maybe the most sanity-preserving thing to do is find a contact form solution that's fail-safe, secure, idiot-proof, and requires a minimum of hand-holding...and not try to trouble-shoot this...

First redirect the address to yourself and see what the real problem is.

It sounds like he may be using a desktop client. If that's the case, it's entirely possible that it may be a relay problem that has nothing to do with the form.

To prevent spam, sometimes ISPs will suddenly (and without warning) start prohibiting relaying, meaning that he will no longer be able to send outgoing mail through his business domain (let's call it acmewidgets.com for now)—e.g. when trying to send an email in Outlook you get errors along the lines of "host cannot accept..." or "relaying denied..." or "connection refused...".

My ISP is Comcast and they seem to fiddle with the relay settings form time to time—99% of the time I can send mail via my personal domains' mailboxes, but every once in a while I have to switch back to using Comcast's servers. What he would have to do get around it is set up his email client to use his ISP's SMTP settings. It's not that hard to do, but if he's as technically challenged as he sounds, then it may be a PITA trying to walk him through it.

I'll stop here since I don't want to confuse you with info you may not need. Your best bet is to first try to find out the how/when/where of the steps that result in the error he's getting, then you can work out the why.

I feel your pain.

Never assume; always ask. Sometimes people do stuff you'd never in a million years imagine.

If the form is properly configured to set the "from:" address as the email address the visitor entered, then there's no reason he shouldn't be able to hit "reply" and have it work.

Again, get the details first. It may be a simple fix.

Digi

like Dizian said he maybe using a email client like outlook and when it cant get to the host it just fails...if your still looking for a contact forum i have a great one for you its pretty much fail safe, just let me know if you want it.