This post will go over this error you might see if you are using Exchange and using an external SMTP server. The reason why you are receiving the error: “Sending’ reported error (0x80070057) : ‘Could not complete the operation. One or more parameter values are not valid.” is that the contact you are trying to send to is of type “EX” instead of “SMTP”.
I was banging my head today when I came across this error: “Sending’ reported error (0x80070057) : ‘Could not complete the operation. One or more parameter values are not valid.”!
A company I was at was using exchange as a glorified backup repository. This actually works quite nice in that all the email is stored in one database and is easy to backup. It even better that they are a non-profit so they basically paid peanuts for the software.
The reason why they were getting this error is that their internal email addresses matched those on the ISP server.
So instead of sending the email via SMTP like they should they were trying to send emails using EX type.
Here are steps needed to take to address the contacts that are set to use EX instead of SMTP.
The most likely cause of the Outlook (x80070057) error or trouble sending TMP emails is:
You can do this easily by:
1.) Outlook.
2.) Create a new email
3.) Click the “To” button.
4.) Make sure that your computer is trying to pull from your local contacts instead of “Global Address List”.
5.) Scan the list of contacts. Most of the contacts should be of SMTP type. You might find some that look like this “Help Desk” example:
6.) Make sure that you write down ALL contacts that have the “EX” type. I this case I would just have to write down “Help Desk”. Close all windows till you are back to Outlook and are in your inbox.
7.) Click on “Contacts” in outlook.
*NOTE* You will need to do the next few steps for every contact that is of “EX” type.
8.) Find the first contact in your list you made in step 6 and double click it.
9.) In the Email section completely remove the email address. Type without quotes:
“smtp:tech@themeetingplace.mb.ca” . Do NOT just type “smtp:”before the email you
will not fool the program!
10.) Click the little “Address book” icon beside the email address.
11.) Right Click the email address and select Outlook Properties
12.) You will now have to remove the “smtp:” like so.
Before
After removing “smtp:”
13.) click Ok.
14.) Click in the “Web Page Address:” Field. You will notice that the “Display as” is now
the same as the email properties.
15.) Click Save and Close.
Steve Pennington says
Excellent post! This error seems to also trigger if you’ve exported contacts from within an Exchange organization and then imported them to a POP3 only environment. The same steps fix up the bad contacts.
Gerhard Peters says
Thank you for the detailed information. My problem was a little different (same error message though) but your steps solved my problem.
Jared Heinrichs says
Nice to meet a fellow (ex) Manitoban. Are you going to “Manitoba Home Comming”? http://www.manitobahomecoming2010.com/
Y.T. Lin says
Thank you for the information. However, my Contact List have only SMTP and FAX types. I followed the procedure exactly with FAX instead of EX. After closing my Outlook and restart the Outlook, the error messages come back again. Any comments and other suggestions on this problem will be greatly appreciated.
Y.T.
Scott says
Wanted to say thank you for this information. It is 100% right on. I have been looking for this fix for about a month.
L.Robinson says
In my case, it was using the Global List, but they were all SMTP. However, I had one entry in my contacts and after deleting that and restarting Outlook the error cleared. Oddly, nothing I was trying to send was to the contact that I ended up deleting.
Carlos Soto says
Thanks for this, however, this is just a band-aid. The problem keeps recurring when a contact is created from the GAL. Is there a permanent solution for this?
Adnan says
No more head banging for me. Well done mate your fix was spot on.
Tigran says
Great help. Thanks for the detailed info. I couldn’t really figure out how to scan the emails, but by process of elimination, found the culprit. Worked perfectly.
Lou Carey says
Thank you very much – saved the day!
BonBonit says
Great post – just few quick notes:
— In my outlook it was impossible to detect which contact is SMTP and is EX;
— I went contact by contact, to change the SMTP config, and it looks like the this issue with deleting the email address completley and then re-enter it, resolves it indeed.
— My bottom line was: I only had one contact(!!) on my email that caused this problem.. but I understood it only later.
You have done a GREAT job man!
Gayeth A. Khalil says
Hi,
I had a similar problem and your solution worked with me.
thank you very much for the efforts
Jeremy says
Thanks so much for the help. I had synced a contact list from SharePoint with Outlook. The list had both external email addresses and internal (company) email addresses. The internal addresses were reverting to the GAL directory. With your solution, I was able to make those “culprits” SMTP addresses and they now work perfectly.
Thanks again