Answers.Body: <p>Rather than sending the follow up to the Parent Group, why not send it to the recipients of the first email, rather than to the Group that was the target of the first email - which might avoid any such parent/child confuddling, if that was in fact the issue</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2023-05-01T19:41:11.480Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2023-05-01T19:41:11.480Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Body: <p>In a recent mailing we noted that CiviMail is not respecting the &quot;excluded&quot; groups option. In this case, we were contacting people to respond to a survey, and created a group for those who had already responded. The intention was to send reminders only to those that did not yet respond, so logically the email recipients would be &quot;Survey group&quot; (parent group) minus &quot;Responded group&quot; (child group). However, multiple contacts in the &quot;Responded group&quot; received the email (though not all contacts). Is there a way to troubleshoot why this isn't working as expected, or are our expectations wrong? Could this be because we sent the mailing to a parent group of the &quot;Responded group&quot;?
  Running CiviCRM 5.58.1 on Joomla 3.10.11.</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-19T19:54:37.220Z
Comments.Text: Not sure if this helps, but I wonder if there are duplicate contacts in the recipient list? Maybe the exclusion list only removes one instance of an email? I know CiviCRM dedupes when sending, but maybe it does the dedupe after the exclusion list is processed?
Comments.UserDisplayName: kapn
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-19T20:50:30.217Z
Comments.Text: I believe a Parent Group includes everyone in all the child groups, so yes i could imagine that if you are saying, 'send to the parent group but exclude the child group' you could end up with problems - that said, if tht was the case it would have gone to ALL not just some.
Comments.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-19T20:51:37.320Z
Comments.Text: Rather than sending the follow up to the Parent Group, why not send it to the recipients of the first email, rather than to the Group that was the target of the first email - which might avoid any such parent/child confuddling, if that was in fact the issue
Comments.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-04-20T23:35:13.590Z
Comments.Text: Is the Responded group a smart group? Maybe some kind of smart group caching issue could cause this.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Lars SG
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-05-01T03:29:17.103Z
Comments.Text: @petednz-fuzion we tried that for the next reminder mailing and it worked - nobody in the "excluded" group got the email. There were no duplicate email accounts, and neither group was a smart group, so that was our best bet. If you convert this to an answer, I will accept it. Thank you!
Comments.UserDisplayName: LMK Web
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-05-01T19:41:26.360Z
Comments.Text: @LMKWeb added as answer
Comments.UserDisplayName: petednz - fuzion
Tags: <civimail><groups>
Title: Emails being send to explicitly excluded contacts
ThreadText: # Emails being send to explicitly excluded contacts
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2023-04-19)
  
  In a recent mailing we noted that CiviMail is not respecting the "excluded" groups option. In this case, we were contacting people to respond to a survey, and created a group for those who had already responded. The intention was to send reminders only to those that did not yet respond, so logically the email recipients would be "Survey group" (parent group) minus "Responded group" (child group). However, multiple contacts in the "Responded group" received the email (though not all contacts). Is there a way to troubleshoot why this isn't working as expected, or are our expectations wrong? Could this be because we sent the mailing to a parent group of the "Responded group"?
  Running CiviCRM 5.58.1 on Joomla 3.10.11.
  
  **Tags:** civimail, groups
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Not sure if this helps, but I wonder if there are duplicate contacts in the recipient list? Maybe the exclusion list only removes one instance of an email? I know CiviCRM dedupes when sending, but maybe it does the dedupe after the exclusion list is processed?  
  > **username_2**: I believe a Parent Group includes everyone in all the child groups, so yes i could imagine that if you are saying, 'send to the parent group but exclude the child group' you could end up with problems - that said, if tht was the case it would have gone to ALL not just some.  
  > **username_2**: Rather than sending the follow up to the Parent Group, why not send it to the recipients of the first email, rather than to the Group that was the target of the first email - which might avoid any such parent/child confuddling, if that was in fact the issue  
  > **username_3**: Is the Responded group a smart group? Maybe some kind of smart group caching issue could cause this.  
  > **username_0**: @username_2 we tried that for the next reminder mailing and it worked - nobody in the "excluded" group got the email. There were no duplicate email accounts, and neither group was a smart group, so that was our best bet. If you convert this to an answer, I will accept it. Thank you!  
  > **username_2**: @username_0 added as answer  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2023-05-01. Score: 2 | Accepted answer
  
  Rather than sending the follow up to the Parent Group, why not send it to the recipients of the first email, rather than to the Group that was the target of the first email - which might avoid any such parent/child confuddling, if that was in fact the issue
  
  
  ---
  
  