NOTE – Before spending a lot of time working on a problem, pulling your hair out, throwing things, or calling support….. Close all programs and turn the device off. Wait a minute and start again. You will find this simple procedure cures a lot of problems. As a habit, if you’re one of those that goes long periods of time leaving your device or computer on, your should every few days close all programs and then turn the device off.

​

Great article on email troubleshooting – Click Here

 

Troubleshooting Common Email Issues

Email is a broad category and some users don’t understand the relationship between email and Internet access. Errors may be easy to diagnose while others require some investigation.

​

Connected? Make sure your device or computer is connected to the Internet. Open a web browser and go to www.google.com. Do a basic search. If you get results of your search then you have Internet access.

​

Bouncebacks

If you’re receiving bouncebacks, read the email showing the bounceback. There is normally an explanation. In most cases, the returned email will state exactly why the email was bounced back. Some common reasons:

​

• Blocked: Your email server could be on the receiver’s blocked list.

​

• Recipient does not exist: This is a very common problem. The email address you’re sending to no longer exist, or is misspelled.

​

In most cases, you can do a web search if there is an error code or explanation to determine the likely cause.

​

• Spam: All outgoing email is filtered by the system to prevent users from sending spam. The system uses sophisticated tools to determine if your email contains spam. It may be something very innocent but words, phrases and the connection of pieces of the email itself or perhaps the subject will be picked up as spam and rejected.

 

Mailbox Size

You can log into your webmail and on the home page, see what size your email box is plus how much space is currently used.

 

• Processing: All incoming and outgoing messages must pass through your email box. Regardless of whether you use webmail or an email program, you log into your email box every time you send or receive. Every bit of information setting in your box, even the trash, counts as space. If you attempt to send an email (along with attachment) that’s larger than the available space, your email will fail to be processed. If you are receiving and email at the same time one is outgoing, there may not be enough space for both at the same time and therefore your email will be bounced. See Dick Quota Exceeded.

 

• Disk Quota Exceeded: You have exceeded the disk space for your email account. Solution – log into your webmail account and delete emails no longer needed. Delete the emails in both the spam and trash folders.

​

Missing Emails

You are missing chunks of email from your Inbox.

​

You may have checked your email with a POP account on a different device. An email program set up with POP settings typically causes the email to download off the server. Perhaps you don’t recall checking email from an older computer or device. In many cases, you may be using IMAP now and POP on your older devices. You may have had the older device set to automatically check and download your email and when you turned on the old device it did just that. You should disable the old email program. If you’re not able to do that, change your password via webmail. If you change your password, you will also need to change it on all your current devices.

​

Email(s) Not Received

The email may have been flagged as spam and rejected by the system or flagged as potential spam and placed in the spam folder.

​

Check your spam folder in webmail.

​

Check with the sender and ask if they received a bounceback. If so, ask them to take a look at the bounceback email to determine the cause. Please review Bouncebacks.

​

Yahoo and/or Hotmail Emails are delayed for days.

​

Some large email providers have a process they call “gray listing” which delays suspicious email for sometimes days. The email will be delayed and ultimately delivered. Check the subject and content of your email(s) to make sure you aren’t triggering the spam filter.