Blackboard Email Saved Contact in Outlook Causing Student Email Issues

Overview

Students may report an issue when replying to or sending an email to their instructors receive a bounce-back message or are not delivered. In another instance, you may see a legitimate email received from a different instructor's display name. This happens when an incorrect Blackboard email contact has been saved in the Outlook "Contacts" folder. More details on both the incidents have been listed below:

Emails Received from a Different Instructor's Display Name 

A student may be receiving multiple emails from a different instructor that they are not taking classes with but the email belongs to their current classes. The emails are legitimate but the “from” in the email is incorrect.

Cause

This happens when their student email (Outlook or Outlook Web) saves incorrect contact for an email originating from within Blackboard. The generic do-not-reply@blackboard.com email address is saved as a contact under one of their previous instructor's names. Consequently, when an email is received from this generic blackboard email address, a contact in the student’s email account acts like a “frequent contact” and changes the “from” display name to match what was saved in the contact.

Resolution

1. Delete the saved contact. Check instructions on how to delete the incorrectly saved contact here.
2. If this doesn't resolve the issue, contact the IT Service Desk.

Receiving a Bounce Back Email 

A student may be receiving a bounce-back email as shown below in the screenshot.

Cause

Student receives the below bounce-back email if they are trying to send an email to do-not-reply@blackboard.com generic email address. This may indicate that the instructor they are trying to email has an incorrect saved contact in their student email.

Resolution

1. Verify if you are sending an email to the correct email address. Ensure there are no spelling mistakes in the email address you are trying to send an email to. 
2. Confirm and delete any incorrectly saved contact by following the instructions here.
3. If this doesn't resolve the issue, contact the IT Service Desk and attach a copy of the bounce-back email you received.

Resolution

Both the above-mentioned incidents can be resolved by deleting the saved contact referencing to Blackboard email (if any) and checking that other contacts do not reference do-not-reply@blackboard.com. Follow the steps listed below to delete the incorrect saved contact from your student email.

Steps to delete the saved contact:

1. Log in to your student email using your student email address and password at Office.com.
2. Click on the Contacts tab.
3. Under Contact and Contacts Lists, scroll through the list to find any contacts referencing do-not-reply@blackboard.com.
4. Select the contact and delete using the 'Delete' button on the top menu.
5. Check that other contacts do not reference the email address "do-not-reply@blackboard.com".