We often get calls to help clients who are having problems receiving email. Email is a medium we have all come to absolutely rely on 24/7. Most of us are even plugged into our various email accounts on our smartphones, all the time and everywhere.
But occasionally we notice that we have not received any email in awhile, or we get a call from someone who sent us an email and they are wondering if we received it, because they have not received a reply from us and it is something urgent. Upon closer examination it becomes apparent that our email is not working.
What Do I Do?
First, are you connected to the Internet? Open a Web browser and see if you can surf the Web. I like to go to cnn.com or a similar site that has a date-time stamp displayed so I know I’m not looking a cached page. Is your Internet access working? If yes, read on…
If you use more than one device (say, your computer and smartphone or tablet) to access your email, then first check to see if any of the other devices is receiving email successfully. You would see this if there are new messages on that device that are not on the devise that is not getting email. If that second device does have newer email, then that shows that the mail server is working and therefore the problem is the original device connection to the mail server.
I Only Have One Device…
If you only access your email account with one device, then try this. The first thing we suggest is to login to your email account using a Web mail interface if you have that available (our clients do). This means you open a Web browser and navigate to the proper Web address for your Webmail. You will need your username and password to login. Obviously you will need to have your password…
Once logged into your Web mail, see if there are recent unread emails in your inbox that have not downloaded to your device. If there are, then your computer (or whatever device you’re using) is not connecting to the mail server.
My Computer Is Not Connecting to the Email Server
For a computer, the best first course of action is to close your email software and restart it. If that solves the problem new unread email should start downloading.
If that does not work then try rebooting the computer. This can solve a host of problems including any WiFi or other local network issues you may have.
If rebooting your computer does not work, you can also reboot the router to see if that fixes the problem.
Email STILL Not Working?
Is your email hosted at your own or another private domain name? If so, check to see if the domain name registration may have expired. You can do this by using any WHOIS query tool. We have one located here. Look at the renewal date shown at or near the bottom of the returned record. Is that date in the past? If so, this is the first problem to solve! It will likely fix the broken email problem.
If your email is still not working and none of the above, you should contact your email hosting provider technical support. If we are your email hosting provider, call us.