How to Get Problems with Email Solved.
In order to get most problems with email delivery solved, you first must extract the full (or raw) message headers from the relevant (problem) email.
Then these message headers, as well as any bounce message you have received, must be sent to your email administrator. The bounce message is the message you got back telling you that your email wasn't delivered and why it wasn't delivered.
The full message headers are normally hidden from your view because they are quite verbose and the information contained in them isn't needed until something goes wrong. However once there are problems it is almost impossible to conslusively determine what are the source of your problems without the full message headers.
How To Show The Full Headers of an Email Message
The first thing you need to do is display the full headers. Here is how to display FULL MAIL HEADERS in some of the more common email clients.
- Apple Mail.app
- Select the message you need full headers for and then go to the menu "View - Message - Original Content". As a shortcut you can select the message and then hit "option-command-U".
- Eudora
- Double-click on the problem mail message in your mail box to open it in the read window (i.e. not in the preview window) and then click on the "BLAH BLAH BLAH" button.
- Mozilla / Netscape 7 / Thunderbird
- Select the message for which you need full headers and then go to the menu "View - Headers - All". As a shortcut you can select the message and then hit "control-U".
- Pegasus Mail
- Double click on the problem mail message in your mail box, and when the message is open hit "control-H".
- Pocomail
- Click on the "Headers" button in the top right-hand corner of the preview window, or go to the menu "View - View Headers - Show full headers".
- Microsoft Outlook
- Unknown.
- Microsoft Outlook Express
- Right click on the problem mail message and select "Properties" then change to the 'Details' tab. For the full message source (not just the headers) click the "Message Source..." button.
What to Send
In order to debug the problem you have to email your email administrator the information they will need to solve your problem. What you send will vary a little depending on your problem:
- If you got a bounce message
- Send the full headers of the bounce message to your email administrator.
- If the message was delivered but seemed to take a very long time
- You need to have the person to whom you sent the email, send the slow message, with it's full headers to your email administrator.
- If you didn't get a bounce and the message never got delivered
- You need to go into your Sent email folder, find the message you sent and email the full headers of that message to your email administrator.
Once you can see all of the message headers (look below for an example of what you should see, in particular you must have the Received: headers) copy and paste the all the headers and the message itself to your email administrator.
About Email Headers
Here is an example of what the full email headers look like from a message I recieved from my father (note that email addresses have been santized to prevent further damage):
Return-Path: <brett@...>
X-Original-To: adam@...
Delivered-To: adam@...
Received: from mahler.earthlight.co.nz (mahler.earthlight.co.nz [202.36.170.3])
by ronin.spack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E2DE2C10D
for <adam@...>; Tue, 1 Jun 2004 21:00:27 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from bretts.earthlight.co.nz (10.10.10.214) [210.54.25.104]
by mahler.earthlight.co.nz with smtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian))
id 1BVMt4-0001HD-00; Wed, 02 Jun 2004 15:57:58 +1200
From: Brett Shand <brett@...>
To: Adam Shand <adam@...>
X-Mailer: PocoMail 3.1 (1880) - Licensed Version
Reply-To: brett@...
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 15:58:03 +1200
Message-ID: <20046215583.129412@user-cc9d8aaf47>
In-Reply-To: <CA0905B6-B446-11D8-B488-0003934C5E3E@shand.net>
Subject: Re: Coming to Blenheim
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-MailScanner: Found to be clean
The actual headers will vary depending on the type of mail server the message has passed through, the email client used to send the message, any spam or virus scanners it passes through and whether the message originated from a MailList. However there are a few crucial headers which are vital for debugging:
- Received:
Every mail server that a message passes through will add a recieved header to the top of the message, in this case you can see that it passed through two main steps. The first mail server mahler.earthlight.co.nz received the message from the host bretts.earthlight.co.nz on 02 Jun 2004 at 15:57:58 +1200. Mahler then delivered the message to ronin.spack.org at 1 Jun 2004 on 21:00:27 -0700 (note that the reason it appears to have travelled back in time is that mahler is in DunedinNewZealand while ronin is in PortlandOregon and there is quite a large time difference).
- Date:
This is the time that the message was finished and author clicked "Send" or "Queue" in their email client. If there is a big time difference between the Date: header and the time stamp on the first Received: header is significantly different you can assume that the author closed the mail client, or disconnected their internet connection before it had a chance to be sent.
- Message-ID:
Every email message is assigned a unique message ID. This ID can be used to search the mail servers logs to see what the server thinks happened to the message. You can also see in the Received: header that it shows the "id" that each server assigned the email as it was processing it. This information is vital to email administrators who are trying to debug what happened to your email.