Google Group – “An error (#357) occurred while communicating with the server” Error

17 Replies

If you are landing on my blog post, it means that you have been driven to the wall by this error message that you got from your Google Groups, ”An error (#357) occurred while communicating with the server”. Don’t worry I have been there….I tried so many times to add new members to my Google Group, but no matter how many times and when I added the members, I simply can’t add new members to my Google Group. Arrghhh…how frustrating :(

Well…error #357 can be triggered by different things. I was searching through the Internet, and it seems most of the time, this error happened when:

  • Replying a message
  • Inviting new members

To save you some time, let me share you with the solution that I found. I tried this solution when I was trying to invite new members to my Google Group, so hopefully the same principle would work in replying a post too….so far, I don’t have any problem in replying a post though.

Make sure the following are true.

  1. Your welcoming message are shorter than 800 characters.
  2. The email addresses that you use to invite your new members are in this format:
    “name1″ <email1@domain1.com>, “name2″ <email2@domain2.com>, etc…

That’s it. Please try them and let me know whether the solution above worked for you.

  • Chuck

    Format of the new members was the problem.  Thanks.

    • http://myinternetcorner.com Steven Sentosa

      You are right, Chuck. The problem is in the email format of the new members that we use when we are inviting them.

  • Cindy Merrill

    Your solution didn’t work for me, unfortunately, while trying to add or invite new members into my Google Group.  My welcome message is about 200 characters, and I reformatted the new email addresses into the format you said, but I still get error #357.  Any other suggestions I could try?  

  • Cindy Merrill

    P.S.  I just tried a dramatically shorter welcome message, and I didn’t get the error message.  Problem solved!

    • http://myinternetcorner.com Steven Sentosa

      Hi Cindy, I’m glad that your problem was solved. I’m not sure why Google requires us to use shorter message like that. To me, it’s too short :(

  • Jsetsaas

    Reduced the size of the welcome message, and this solved the issue.
    Thx.

    • http://myinternetcorner.com Steven Sentosa

      yup…it seems that it will solve the problem most of the time. How short is a “reduced size” though?

  • Warwick

    Thanks for that! I shortened my welcome message, and it worked! Mind you, I’ve tried this before, and it didn’t. I have no idea what is going on…but thanks again!

    • http://myinternetcorner.com Steven Sentosa

      Hi Warwick…Google often revises their algorithm, so it could be that this method only worked now. I have no idea whether this method will work 3 months from now, but it sure does work now :)

  • Tomatzao

    Thanks a lot for your solution ! With a shorter message, i can invite new members to my group.

    • http://myinternetcorner.com Steven Sentosa

      Glad that I can help Tomatzao!

  • XOX

    thankss

  • Bob Booth

    Thanks, I reduced my message to under 8o characters and it worked. I didn’t need to change email format they remained in the form:

    name1@domain1.com,name2@domain2.com,name3@domain3.com

    • http://myinternetcorner.com Steven Sentosa

      Hi Bob,

      Thanks for pointing that out.

      - Steven

  • http://twitter.com/tokyopingu Emi Takemura Miller

    very helpful info. Seems like they only let only 10 people enter at any given time as well… very inefficient, though I understand their spam concern

  • phich

    yo man that worked, thanks

  • David

    I always got the error code #391 when I tried to add a “@googlemail.com” address. When I replaced the domain part with “@gmail.com” I finally got rid of this problem.