I have been trying repeatedly (Over the last 15 hours) to send an E-mail from Outlook and although the E-mail goes off, I get no delivery receipts back (These having been requested).

I've pinged the destination domain (An org.uk address) through the DOS Window in Windows 7 and that appears to be OK .

The intended recipient advises that nothing has been received. The recipient suspects that there may be something wrong with the E-mail system ay her end.

Is it possible to ping a specific E-mail address or to pose some sort of system enquiry that will tell me whether a particular E-mail address is valid ?

My Outlook client operates via a Hotmail E-mail account using the Outlook connector software. Logging-in directly to the Hotmail account through IE9, the two e-mails sent to this recipient are shown as sent (Though again, there is no delivery receipt).

I don't think there is a problem on my side.

Can i test this E-mail. If so, how ?

Cheers

Nick

Edited 29 August, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

As far as I know you can only check whether an e-mail address is valid or not, read or delivery receipts do not always work, and the recipient can choose not to send them.

http://www.labnol.or...-address/18220/

It is always possible that it has been filtered by the recipients e-mail system into junk/spam etc.

Edited 29 August, 201213 yr by nokiauk

ok lets break this down

I have been trying repeatedly (Over the last 15 hours) to send an E-mail from Outlook and although the E-mail goes off, I get no delivery receipts back (These having been requested).

These can be blocked by the recipient servers administrators often done for spam prevention, often delivery receipts can also be generated by the client so if the mail isn't being received it wont be generated.

I've pinged the destination domain (An org.uk address) through the DOS Window in Windows 7 and that appears to be OK .

Often totally pointless doing this as contrary to popular belief email isn't usually received by the same address as the web server that responds on the www address.

Email over the internet is received by servers configured in MX records for example with briskoda.net

you'll see Briskoda.net and www.briskoda.net resolve to the below:

Name: briskoda.net

Address: 188.94.75.94

Name: www.briskoda.net

Address: 188.94.75.94

BUT if you look at the MX records (Mail eXchanger) records:

briskoda.net mail exchanger = 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.

briskoda.net mail exchanger = 20 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.

briskoda.net mail exchanger = 30 aspmx2.googlemail.com.

briskoda.net mail exchanger = 30 aspmx3.googlemail.com.

briskoda.net mail exchanger = 10 aspmx.l.google.com.

you'll see that briskoda.net's email is actually handled by a google mail service which is a totally separate.

The intended recipient advises that nothing has been received. The recipient suspects that there may be something wrong with the E-mail system ay her end.

Is it possible to ping a specific E-mail address or to pose some sort of system enquiry that will tell me whether a particular E-mail address is valid ?

You could it's quite complicated if you've never tried it before and it may yield an incorrect answer as you're on a home connection which i suspect will have a dynamic ip which may well be blocked if you try to send directly from your machine to their mail account. (ie not via hotmail)

you'll find the technique here

The best bit of advice is for your recipient to contact her ISP's support department with your email address and they should be able to check the mail logs so see if your email has been received, also since you are using hotmail as often happens with many hotmail addresses is they get caught up in various ISP's spam filters so i'd suggest they check their junk/spam folders and if the email is there add your address to their whitelist.

As far as I know you can only check whether an e-mail address is valid or not, read or delivery receipts do not always work, and the recipient can choose not to send them.

http://www.labnol.or...-address/18220/

It is always possible that it has been filtered by the recipients e-mail system into junk/spam etc.

Its an NHS doctors surgery, so anything could have happened. I was thinking along the lines that someone had changed the separate e-mail address for prescriptions without updating the advice on their web-site. This is the second time in 4 months it has happened. It was perfectly OK before that.

God they are inefficient.

Roll-on privatisation when it all gets centralised.

Nick

Sounds like a P.I.C.N.I.C. error to me

Sounds like a P.I.C.N.I.C. error to me

Even though its raining down here. I'm not biting today. . . . . . .

The destination e-mail address I was using was copy and pasted from previous e-mail that had worked.

Aand after the first failure to respond today i double-checked the address with their website and over the phone with the reception. All corresponded so, i attempted a second send and the same happened again - receptionist confirmed no-show. So, even though most of the items I was requesting were already listed on their system because i was demanding a couple of additional items, I sent a fax (At the suggestion of the receptionist). This got through OK.

Subsequently, I followed up on WLs telnet suggestion using the telnet open mail.XXXXXXXXXXXX.org.uk, smtp, but that didn't work as it couldn't find the default SMTP port. At that point, I backed-off and gave up being mindful of the risk of crossing a Ccomputer misuse threshold.

I've just checked the E-Mail in-box, and they acknowledged receipt. So all's well, apparently, but I don't know yet whether they were acknowledging the later fax or the earlier E-mail.

Hopefully, i'll find out which one they've acted on when i go to collect the scripts - the faxed later one includes an additional request.

As WL suggested, I should think the most likely thing that is happening is that their system has started to filter incoming hotmail sourced e-Mail as junk - but then again that wasn't happening at the beginning of the year.

Nick

Edited 29 August, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

have you not got a secondary email account you could try sending it from? You're with BT IIRC, so you should have been allocated an @btinternet.com email account. Try sending the email via that account and see what happens.

Generally Nick you'll find that most web based email providers are more trouble than they are worth (Yahoo,Hotmail) etc, their email addresses tend to be subject to much stricter spam scrutiny due to the ease that they can be signed up with, infact a lot of sites wont allow users with these free based email services to even sign up.

I'd suggest that you sign up for your own domain with email hosting that has webmail access to it, that way if you change internet providers you won't have to change your email address, plus you wont have the issues of the junk that comes from hotmail. These guys are quite reasonable.

As a messaging administrator for a multinational IT firm that looks after a lot of big corporations/government bodies systems, i can tell you that on average i'd say 70-85% of all email that passes on the internet is Spam/Junk so its quite easy for genuine stuff to get caught up in spam filters.

If you are going to carry on using your hotmail account, common things i've found that cause the emails to get caught in spam filters are:

1. Emails with no subject

2. Emails with a lot of typos

3. Emails with attachments and/or links with no other text.

4. Emails that are just a single line with no punctuation.

There is a broken underwater cable that is causing issues. Could be this.

If urgent call them or ask for another email address to send to

IIRC our incoming email at work is scanned for spam and other nefarious things and anything the anti-spam/virus software objects to is just quietly dumped and never reaches the email server. So the sender receives nothing in the way of notifications.

Edited 29 August, 201213 yr by trundlenut

Our Health Centre actually warns you that they may "reject" hotmail emails.

Hotmail is the pits, I ditched it years ago for exactly this reason, emails were constantly not arriving due to being blocked, either by hotmail itself, or by the spam filters on non hotmail servers.

The problem is the NHS email system, as it filters out anything remotely suspicious. If you have an attachment on your email it increases the chance of it being blocked, include pictures its likely to get stopped, zip files etc. Basically anything that could lead to malware etc. getting in or sensitive data getting out.

Try sending a simple text email saying test or simillar and see if they get that.

You cannot ping email addresses, as mentioned earlier email is typically handled by different servers. Where I work, our website is hosted by a company elsewhere in the UK, whereas the email is delivered to a server in our office. So if you were to ping the www address you could be pinging Aberdeen for example, whereas the email is delivered and handled in Dorset.

Pickup the phone, dial their number, and ask them to confirm the address and/or receipt of the mail.

You could always walk round and speak to them face-to-face, the walk would do you good too. Out in the fresh air, away from the computer, maybe you'll find some more things to complain about on the way too :p :p

Re various comments above.

The instructions on the surgery website positively advocate the submission prescription requests by an E-mail

There's nothing on the Surgery website to indicate that Hotmail is not accepted and as said, it was OK at the beginning of the year.

As i said in my posts above, the e-Mail address I used is the one stated on their web-site and was confirmed yesterday as being correct with the receptionist over the phone.

The e-mail was clean, no attachments, embedded anything, my name, DOB and NHS number in the subject line (As they require).

Primae facie, I was doing it all Kocher.

It could be that their mail server went down and that I was just unlucky on the last three occasions when I tried to use it April, June and now.

I will be asking when I attend later in the week whether they know what caused my problem.

NB - I was using hotmail heavily last year to correspond with my ex-employer (MOD) whilst i was home off sick. None, repeat none, of those E-mails, which were heavily laced with attachments, graphic logos etc went adrift or were delayed. I would speculate that the MOD end of the Government Computer System is more heavily policed and protected than the NHS.

So may be tommorrow it will be pink pills all round - I won't be holding my breath.

Nick

Edited 30 August, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

NB - I was using hotmail heavily last year to correspond with my ex-employer (MOD) whilst i was home off sick. None, repeat none, of those E-mails, which were heavily laced with attachments, graphic logos etc went adrift or were delayed. I would speculate that the MOD end of the Government Computer System is more heavily policed and protected than the NHS.

A common (but not excusable) mistake. MOD computers in the sense of the machines they do all their work on, all the top secret documents etc, will be secured up to the eyeballs. Their email system, which is specifically designed to enable worldwide communication with ANY party, via the Internet standards which exist to facilitate such a thing, won't be secured and may even be hosted by a company other than the MOD/UK.gov. The secure computers can't talk to the insecure email system, obviously, but the whole point of email is that anyone can use it and that's how things like SMTP evolved and are now a worldwide standard for anyone who wants to handle email.

edit - same reason that the BAE systems staff I used to work with had a secure office that I wasn't allowed in, and they couldn't read their email from in there, but had to walk out to the main office and check it on their insecure computer.

Even though its raining down here. I'm not biting today. . . . . . .

You know I was actually thinking at their end.

Shocking I know

Edited 30 August, 201213 yr by cheezemonkhai

We have a secure and non secure email system, they are separate and secure email is routed directly via dedicated secure network direct via leased line and goes nowhere near the internet at all. The insecure email system can email the secure one, however sending from the secure to insecure is blocked. From the secure system you can only email a select number of known domains.

Set up and try a gmail account, see if that goes through OK.

Gmail was getting through to me in China, even when all my other accounts were failing (2 different ISPs and Yahoo)