5.7.232: trial tenant reached its external recipient limit

What it means

Exchange Online counts how many external recipients a tenant sends to over a rolling 24 hours, against the tenant external recipient rate limit. For trial tenants the limit is capped at 5,000 external recipients a day. When the count passes it, mail to outside addresses bounces with 5.7.232 for users across the tenant. Sending to external recipients resumes on its own once the total for the latest 24 hours falls below the limit. The cap exists to stop trial tenants being used to distribute unsolicited bulk mail.

Common causes

• Users in a trial tenant sent to more than 5,000 external recipients in 24 hours, counted after group expansion.
• An account in the trial tenant is compromised and sending spam.

How to fix it

1. 01Wait for the rolling 24-hour count to fall below the limit.
2. 02Check the Tenant Outbound External Recipients report in the Exchange admin center under Reports > Mail flow.
3. 03If you need more, move from the trial to a paid subscription, where the limit depends on licenses, and send bulk mail through a dedicated service.

Sources

What this page rests on, checked on 20 Oct 2026. The explanation is ours; the reply text is the server's.

• Email nondelivery reports and SMTP errors in Exchange Onlinelearn.microsoft.com
• Exchange Online limitslearn.microsoft.com