>>"Connection Rejected"
>>if I remember correctly Office 365 requires oAuth 2.0 authentication and the port can't be 25 (maybe 465 or 587), TLS 1.2
>>You could try to send mail with normal CDO with the same parameters (port 25, w/o authentication) just to see if it is possible or what error message this will return.
>>
>
>Thanks. For now, I'm trying this without Office 365 involved at all for simplicity. That's the reason for using the free online SMTP server. I tried setting smtpAuthMethod and that doesn't change anything (which makes sense, based on the docs).
>
>I tried your CDO code below and that also fails to send with the error:
>
>OLE IDispatch exception code 0 from CDO.Message.1: The transport failed to connect to the server.
>
>That makes me think that maybe the note in the original error message about a firewall issue may be the key to solving this. (I hate this kind of stuff.)
>
>Tamar
>

That it is something in your side (Firewall, antivirus) because this code (with real emails for FROM and TO) works here.
?