Back to Clearout in Excel
SheetXAI logo
Clearout logo
Clearout · Excel Guide

Audit Catch-All Email Domains in an Excel workbook Using Clearout

2026-05-14
5 min read

The Scenario

An email deliverability consultant is doing intake on a new client account. The client has 800 B2B email addresses in an Excel workbook they want to send a campaign to next week. The open rates on the last campaign were bad. The deliverability score is worse.

The consultant suspects catch-all domains are part of the problem. When a domain is configured to accept all incoming email regardless of whether the mailbox exists, verification tools return "valid" — but the address might still bounce. Sending to a list full of catch-all domains without flagging them first is how you end up on a suppression list.

The bad version:

  • Save the workbook as a CSV, run it through Clearout's dashboard, download the catch-all results.
  • Open both files, look for the "catch-all" status rows, build a filtered version of the workbook.
  • Give the client two separate files — the original and the filtered version — and explain why the numbers don't match.

The consultant has run this intake process a dozen times. The export-and-reconcile loop never gets cleaner.

There is a cleaner version that stays in the workbook the client already sent over.

The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI

SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It reads the email column, extracts each domain, calls Clearout's catch-all detection for each one, and writes the result back — all without leaving the workbook.

Try this yourself — free for 7 days

SheetXAI installs in your Excel workbook in about a minute. Paste the prompt below and watch it run.

Type this prompt

For each email in column A, use Clearout to check if the domain is a catch-all server and write "catch-all" or "not catch-all" into column B.

What You Get

  • Column B: "catch-all" for domains configured to accept all email, "not catch-all" for domains with proper MX rejection behavior
  • Each label is tied to the domain of the email in column A, not the address itself
  • Rows where the domain check returns an error get an "error" label rather than a silent blank
  • The check is domain-level, so 40 addresses at the same domain all produce the same result efficiently

What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready

Some email addresses in the column are already marked invalid from a prior run

Type this prompt

Skip any row in column A where column B already contains "invalid" from a prior verification pass. For all remaining rows, use Clearout to check catch-all status and write "catch-all" or "not catch-all" into column C.

I want to group the results by domain so the client can see the catch-all domains at a glance

Type this prompt

For each email in column A, extract the domain, check it for catch-all status with Clearout, write "catch-all" or "not catch-all" into column B, then create a summary worksheet that lists each unique domain once with its catch-all status and the count of contacts from that domain.

I want to deprioritize catch-all contacts without deleting them

Type this prompt

Use Clearout to check catch-all status for all emails in column A, write the result into column B, then add a "send tier" column C where catch-all rows get "tier 2" and non-catch-all rows get "tier 1" — so the client can sequence sends by tier.

Full deliverability audit in one prompt

Type this prompt

For every email in column A, run full Clearout verification to get status into column B, sub-status into column C, and catch-all detection into column D. Flag all catch-all rows in column E as "warm-up first," flag invalid rows as "suppress," and write a summary at the bottom: total audited, total suppress, total warm-up first, total safe to send.

One prompt produces a deliverability-ready workbook the client can hand to their ESP directly.

Try It

Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Excel workbook with a prospect list before a high-stakes send — and ask it to run catch-all detection with Clearout. From there, you might want to verify the full list or check the Clearout hub for everything else this integration can do inside a workbook.

Stop memorizing formulas.
Tell your spreadsheet what to do.

Join 4,000+ professionals saving hours every week with SheetXAI.

Learn more