Help Centre
Forwarding
Getting Started
Learn More
Troubleshooting
Your Messages : Sending : Sending : Getting Started
Forwarding messages
To forward an individual message:
- Open the appropriate conversation and select the message to forward.
- Click Forward from the bottom of the message card.
- Enter the email address(es) to which the email should be forwarded, and add any notes in the message field. If the message has attachments, you can choose not to forward them by deselecting the checkbox next to the filename below the Subject field.
- Click Send.
To forward an entire conversation:
- Open the appropriate conversation.
- Click Forward all from the right side of the Conversation View.
Forwarding an entire conversation will add all messages from a conversation into a single message. Each message will be clearly marked, and will be listed in order from oldest to most recent.
To forward an inline image:
- Open the message you'd like to forward.
- Click Forward along the bottom of the message.
- Click Rich formatting >> above the text field of the message you're forwarding.
- Click Send.
You can also forward all your mail
automatically.
At this time, you can't select from your Contacts while forwarding a message.
Your Messages : Sending : Sending : Learn More
Sending with UTF-8 encoding
Each time you send a message, Virgin Media Mail automatically selects an appropriate encoding for the language(s) in which you've composed your mail. It's possible, however, that the recipient may not be able to properly view the message you've sent.
If your contacts are having trouble viewing messages you've sent them, we recommend using 'UTF-8' (Unicode) for all outgoing mail. UTF-8 is a standard encoding that's accepted by many email clients.
Changing your username
It isn't possible to change your primary username once your Virgin Media account is set up, but you can create new email addresses for yourself in Selfcare.
If you'd like to change the name that's used on your outgoing messages, follow these steps:
- Click Settings at the top of any Virgin Media Mail page.
- Open the Accounts tab.
- In the Send mail as: section, locate the email address you'd like to edit.
- Click edit next to the address.
- Change the Name field as desired, and click 'Save changes.'
Sending limits
In an effort to fight spam and prevent abuse, Virgin Media will temporarily disable your account if you send a message to more than 500 recipients or if you send a large number of undeliverable messages. If you use a POP or IMAP client (Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, e.g.), you may only send a message to 100 people at a time. Your account should be re-enabled within 24 hours.
If you send a large number of undeliverable messages, we suggest verifying your contacts' email addresses. It's also important that everyone you are sending mail to is willing to receive it.
Learn more about best practices for sending a large amount of mail through Virgin Media Mail.
Your Messages : Sending : Troubleshooting
The wrong time is listed for messages
If the time displayed on your messages does not match your system clock, your system clock may be set incorrectly. To set your Date and Time Properties in Windows, please follow these steps:
- Double-click the time in your taskbar to open the Date & Time Properties menu.
- From the Date & Time tab, verify that the appropriate month, day, and year are selected.
- Click Apply to save any changes you make.
- From the Time Zone tab, verify that your time zone is selected. If the time zone in which you are located is not displayed, select your time zone from the drop-down menu.
- Verify that the box beside Automatically adjust clock for daylight savings changes is checked.
- Click OK.
Why am I receiving 'Sector 5' bounces?
At Virgin Media Mail, we work very hard to fight spam -- both incoming and outgoing. Believe it or not, some spammers sign up for Virgin Media Mail accounts just to send spam! To help do our part to keep this stuff off the Internet, we bounce mail we're confident is spam. Unfortunately, we're not perfect and will occasionally bounce legitimate mail. We apologise for the inconvenience.
By far the most common source of this problem is sending mail cc'ed or bcc'ed to large numbers of recipients. Users will often create large cc lists for sending out newsletters, party invites, etc. This mail will sometimes bear superficial similarities to spam that's also addressed to many recipients, and will confuse our spam filter.
If you regularly send bulk mail, you can help ensure that it's reliably delivered by making sure you aren't sending mail to people who don't want it or to old or broken addressees. Please check out our full bulk-sender guidelines.
For these reasons we don't recommend using Virgin Media Mail to send bulk mail.
A message I sent bounced
A bounce message, or Delivery Status Notification, lets the sender know that a message wasn't delivered properly. Email providers format their bounce messages differently, but almost all bounces contain details explaining why delivery failed.
The details you're looking for are typically near the top of the message, and are mixed in with various diagnostic codes. Below are some sample bounce details. The important text is in bold:
- PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 mailbox unavailable
- Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 5.1.1 No such user e8si1321249muf
- TEMP_FAILURE: DNS Error: Could not contact DNS servers
These details may indicate a problem with the recipient servers, with the recipient account, with the message you sent or, more rarely, with Virgin Media Mail.
If a message bounces with a 'TEMP_FAILURE' message, Virgin Media Mail tries to send that message for up to 7 days.
Messages may be delayed from reaching a recipient's mailbox for a number of reasons. Delayed messages are most commonly a result of large amounts of incoming email to the recipient's server, or to configuration and domain errors.
At this time, there is no way to cancel delivery once a Virgin Media Mail message has been sent.
Messages I send aren't arriving at their destination
There are a few common reasons your messages might not have arrived at their destinations:
-
Did the recipients check their spam, bin, or junk mail folders?
Webmail providers may classify Virgin Media Mail messages as spam. Ask the person you emailed to check his or her junk mail folders for the missing message. If the recipient is still unable to locate your message, he or she may need to lower the spam filters to receive messages from your Virgin Media Mail account.
-
Did you verify the recipient's address?
We recommend checking the recipient's address to ensure it's spelled and formatted correctly.
-
Is the message in your Sent Mail folder?
Check your Sent Mail folder to confirm that the message has been sent. If it's not there, you should also check your Drafts folder to see if it was auto-saved, but not yet sent.
-
What browser are you using?
Versions of Mozilla or Firefox that were not downloaded directly from Mozilla.org may also cause problems. To avoid these problems, we suggest downloading the latest version of your browser directly from http://www.mozilla.org.
Some addresses in the "Reply-To" field were not recognised
Symptoms:
After clicking Send, you receive a pop-up with the following error message:
Some addresses in the "Reply-To" field were not recognised. Please make sure all addresses are properly formed
Cause:
The reply-to address you've set on your Accounts tab is not formatted properly.
Solution:
- Log in to Virgin Media Mail.
- Click Settings at the top of any page.
- Open the Accounts tab.
- In the Send mail as: section, locate the email address you were using to send.
- Click edit info next to the email address.
- Delete the address in the Reply-to address field.
- Re-enter the address in this format: username@domainname.com (do not use spaces, quotation marks or other special characters)
- Click Save changes.
Troubleshooter: Outgoing Message Bounced
A bounce message, or Delivery Status Notification, lets the sender know that a message wasn't delivered properly. Email providers format their bounce messages differently, but almost all bounces contain details explaining why delivery failed.
To help diagnose the issue, please open the bounce message you received. The details you're looking for are typically near the top of the message, and are mixed in with various diagnostic codes. Below are some sample bounce details. The important text is in bold:
- PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 550 mailbox unavailable
- Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 5.1.1 No such user e8si1321249muf
- TEMP_FAILURE: DNS Error: Could not contact DNS servers
For more information on what different bounce details mean, click the matching option below (most common bounces in bold).
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail. Your recipient domain requires a type of authentication for incoming message (SMTP-IN) transactions that Virgin Media Mail does not support.
We suggest contacting the recipient domain to inform them of this issue.
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail. It appears that the email address you're sending to does not exist.
Please ensure that you've typed the username and domain correctly. If you still receive bounce messages, you'll need to contact the recipient domain to determine why they're not recognizing the address.
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail. The domain you're sending to rejected the message because of certain content (words, links or attachments) in the message.
You'll need to contact the recipient domain to determine what content was objectionable.
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail. This error indicates that the recipient domain does not exist or is experiencing a DNS (Domain Name System) configuration problem.
Please ensure you're spelled the domain name correctly. If you continue to have problems, contact the recipient domain to inform them of the issue.
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail. This bounce indicates that the recipient domain's MX (Mail exchanger) record is misconfigured, and does not recognise current Virgin Media Mail servers.
Please contact the domain's administrators to inform them of this issue.
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail. These errors generally occur when the recipient domain is receiving mail more quickly than it can process. This problem is often temporary and should resolve itself shortly. However, if you continue to receive these bounce messages, it may indicate that the recipient domain has a configuration problem, or is blacklisting Virgin Media Mail.
If these problems persist for more than 12 hours, we suggest contacting the administrators of the recipient domain for further details.
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail. Some organizations, such as SpamCop and Sorbs, keep track of email spam to help email providers and ISPs to prevent spam from being delivered to their users.
Occasionally, Virgin Media is listed by these organisations, perhaps because people are trying to use our network to send spam. Unfortunately, this can cause delivery problems for Virgin Media Mail messages because some email providers and ISPs reject all messages sent from domains listed on SpamCop and Sorbs.
Please be assured that we make every effort to ensure that valid messages are delivered.
This bounce message was not caused by Virgin Media Mail, but by an issue with the recipient domain. Most frequently, the receiving domain is using a problematic SMTP firewall. For additional information, we suggest visiting
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895857. In some cases, this problem occurs when the message is Domain Keys signed or DKIM signed.
We suggest contacting the customer service department of the other webmail provider for further instructions.
In order to protect our users, addresses receiving a high volume of mail may experience slowed or stopped delivery.
Please wait 24 hours before attempting to send again. If the user is able to receive mail at that time, your message will be delivered.
A large amount of spam has originated from your IP address. In order to protect our users, mail from your IP address is being rejected.
Please see our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines for more information.
Please confirm that you are using the correct email address for each individual on your distribution list and that each person has opted to receive information from you. Additionally, please include an unsubscribe link in all of your mass-mailed messages.
This error was not caused by Virgin Media Mail, but by a recipient domain using callback verification.
Callback verification is an anti-spam technique used by SMTP (mail server) software. When a domain using this strategy receives a message from a new server, it replies with a blank message to ensure the sending server exists. Because these blank replies may be sent very frequently, it can resemble a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. For these reasons, Virgin Media Mail does not support sender verification.
Virgin Media Mail uses Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records (see http://www.openspf.org to specify which hosts are permitted to send email, making it hard to forge 'From:' addresses. We strongly encourage other webmail providers to adopt SPF or DomainKeys as a more effective method of fighting spam.
To fix this problem, we suggest contacting the recipient domain and asking them to whitelist Virgin Media Mail from callback verification.
A message I sent was delayed
Occasionally, our mail servers take some time to deliver message. If the problem persists, try visiting our Service News to see if there are any maintenance issues ongoing with our email service. It may also be a problem with the recipient's email service provider, so you should also check if they are having problems receiving messages from other people.
Outgoing messages marked as spam
Unfortunately, Virgin Media Mail messages are sometimes delivered to spam, bulk, and junk folders by other webmail providers.
If you're told that a message you sent from Virgin Media Mail never arrived, we suggest asking the recipient to check his or her spam, bulk, or junk folder.
Quoted text is purple
Virgin Media Mail displays in purple any text quoted from previous messages, making it easier to recognise information from past messages while participating in a conversation.
Troubleshooter: Outgoing Message Delayed
Troubleshooter: Outgoing Message Not Delivered
There are some common reasons for mail not arriving at its destination. To learn more, please select the option below that matches your issue.
