>>>"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.
>?

Yes, I'm convinced it's configuration, but I don't know what. I tried turning off the firewall entirely (just long enough to test) and both methods still failed. Hadn't thought about antivirus; I'll check that out today.

Tamar