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When email goes missing

EmailsEmail is woven so tightly into the fabric of our lives that we take for granted that our messages will get through to their intended recipient. Of course, that doesn’t always happen, and a having a process for troubleshooting those pesky undeliverables will help get your email back on track.

Follow the bouncing email

The first sign that something is amiss is usually when you receive an email “bounce” message. These messages may be created by either the sending or receiving mail server and they include important clues about what went wrong with this particular email transaction. Here are a few things to look for:

  • Where did the bounce message come from? Look at the FROM address. The name will often be something generic like “Mail Delivery System” but the address will identify which service sent the message. This is the point at which the message could go no further.
  • Who is the message to? This is almost always the originator of the message.
  • Try to unravel the body of the message. The format for the reporting of administrative messages is part of the email specification (RFC 6522) and is composed of three parts: 1) a human readable explanation, 2) a machine parsable message/delivery-status, a list of "name: type; value" lines that state several possible fields, and 3) the original message, or a portion thereof.
  • Is there an attachment? Sometimes, the error messages are included in an attachment, as well as or instead of being included in the body of the message.
  • Is it a permanent failure? When there is a chance that the problem is temporary, email servers are programmed to retry sending the message for a number of days. If and when the message fails permanently, you’ll get another message letting you know that no further delivery attempts will be made.

What next?

The next step is delivering this information to someone who can do something with it. Unless you’re managing your own mail server, this is usually your mail service provider. The provider may be an online service like Google or Microsoft or it may be a web hosting company that also hosts your email. Note that in some cases, the message is so self explanatory that no further action is necessary. “Mailbox is full” and “no one here by that name” are two examples.

Tech support will be most interested in the second part of the bounce message, listing the errors that prevented the message from being delivered. The text of the message you sent won’t be of much use to them. As always, follow this format when reporting problems:

  • Describe what you did (in this case, sent email) and what you expected to happen.
  • Describe what actually happened.
  • Provide the errors and message that you received.

Compare the answers that you receive from tech support with what you learned from reading the bounce message and ask follow up questions. For a single isolated bounce message, this may not be worth the trouble. However, if you’ve received a few bounces that look like they might be connected, you’ll want to start the support process. Of course, if you have hosting and management services from Webdancers, help is just a phone call or email away.

Until next week.

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