diff --git a/openerp/tools/mail.py b/openerp/tools/mail.py
index e6b471a26ba..f98ecc9dbd9 100644
--- a/openerp/tools/mail.py
+++ b/openerp/tools/mail.py
@@ -320,14 +320,12 @@ def append_content_to_html(html, content, plaintext=True, preserve=False, contai
 # Emails
 #----------------------------------------------------------
 
-email_re = re.compile(r"""
-    ([a-zA-Z][\w\.-]*[a-zA-Z0-9]     # username part
-    @                                # mandatory @ sign
-    [a-zA-Z0-9][\w\.-]*              # domain must start with a letter ... Ged> why do we include a 0-9 then?
-     \.
-     [a-z]{2,3}                      # TLD
-    )
-    """, re.VERBOSE)
+# matches any email in a body of text
+email_re = re.compile(r"""([a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6})""", re.VERBOSE) 
+
+# matches a string containing only one email
+single_email_re = re.compile(r"""^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6}$""", re.VERBOSE)
+
 res_re = re.compile(r"\[([0-9]+)\]", re.UNICODE)
 command_re = re.compile("^Set-([a-z]+) *: *(.+)$", re.I + re.UNICODE)