When someone tries to send you an email message, and it is returned to them as undelivered, there is usually an accompanying error message which gives the reason. It lets the sender know whether the problem is with their account, or with your account. Here's a checklist to help you get to the bottom of it.
- Double-checked the address? If they’ve accidentally mistyped the address, that could be why the email has bounced back. Ask them to check both your name, and the domain part of your email address (for example, @hotmial.com instead of @hotmail.com).
- Have they used your spam trap address? That’s an email address that diverts spam away from an email user’s primary mailbox to an unseen location. Make sure the person who’s emailing you is using your primary email address.
An example of a spam trap address might be: joebloggs@dontspamme.myisp.co.uk - Email too big? Ask the sender to check the size of the email. It may be too large to send. As a general guide, if a file is larger than 10MB, it is probably too big to send by email. Also, if they’re trying to send an attachment, this makes the email bigger still. To find out more, click on Sending an attachment.
- Mailbox full? You may have your email client set up to save a copy of each message you receive on the mail server. If you do, the mailbox on your server will eventually become full, so it won't be able to accept any more messages. The best way to solve this is to go into webmail. After you have logged in you will arrive directly at your webmail mailbox, where all your incoming e-mails are stored before e-mail applications (like Outlook Express and Mac Mail) download them from our server. Here you can go through your emails and delete the ones you don't need anymore.
If you want to prevent this from happening again, you can set up Outlook Express or Mail for Mac to automatically delete the copy of the message from the server once you have downloaded it, which will save a lot of space.
- Problem with the other person’s account? It could be that your email account is working fine, but the account of the person emailing you isn’t working as it should do. Normally, they’ll get what’s called a “bounce-back” email if their message can’t be delivered. Check to see if the bounce-back email came from the sender’s Internet Service Provider; this suggests that the problem lies with their server. The sender can run a traceroute, which lets them pinpoint where the issue is, then post the result to their ISP’s Support team. Click here for a Microsoft article on traceroutes.
- Problem with our service? If the bounce back message came from Virgin Media, there could be a problem with our email server. If there is, our Support Team will need to have this investigated by our systems administrators. Contact technical support.
- Still no joy? If you've checked all these and you still haven’t got to the bottom of it, make a note of the bounce message, including its full headers, and email this information to our technical support team, who will be able to analyse why it bounced and let you know what to do next.
