Email: when one won’t send

Self-tutoring about email situations: the tutor mentions one.

During the past couple of weeks I’ve written two emails that, when I sent them, wouldn’t show up in the Sent box afterwards. I’d clicked Send, and they seemed to send, but then simply didn’t appear in Sent. In each case, this was a problem, since I needed the email to send.

The first time, I simply tried sending it again a couple of minutes later, and it worked. I thought little more about it: with computers, little hang-ups you’ll never explain seem to happen sometimes.

When it happened the second time, I decided to send a test email to another address: could the email client be the problem? Yet, the test email sent successfully.

Next, I tried sending the email that wouldn’t send from a different email client. That client wouldn’t send it, either, but gave me more information: “Please correct the address before attempting to send.”

Interesting, eh? The problem – as explained by this other email program – was that the sending address wasn’t viable. Yet, it was opened from an email link to that address.

I doubted the email address was wrong, but trusted the email client that complained about it as well. Perhaps, momentarily, that email server was down, so the email client couldn’t send to it. I was surprised, but I guess that could happen.

Ten minutes later, the same email sent successfully. Interesting, eh?

I hope to follow up on this.