Remedies for E mail Issues

Many things can cause e mail problems leading to your e mail no longer working the way it was designed and certainly not the manner in which you would like your e-mail to function. Happily, quite often there may be very easy email remedies for e-mail troubles.

Here are email remedies to try when having email issues and problems.

Update E mail Application

Make sure you have the newest version of your email client (program). You might have to upgrade to fix the email trouble, plus you might avoid many future issues by being up-to-date.

Several Devices

Email can be quite daunting if you utilize more than one device to read your mail. In the event you have one device set to delete the e-mail on a server when it downloads the e-mail, then those messages will not be available whenever you try to access from another device. Setting it so that your emails are not deleted from the server has its own hassles. In the event you do that and then change to another device it will get all the messages as new messages including ones you have read and put in the trash on that other device.

The most effective solution in such cases is to select one device as your primary one (usually a computer) and thus when it downloads email those email messages are deleted from the server. You are able to use other devices to access e mail, but they will only have access to those received since the last time the primary device accessed e-mail. This allows you to check email while on the road, yet those email will still be available on your primary device later.

If your e-mail is by way of a Microsoft Exchange server using Outlook (or something similar) the trouble is remedied. Such a type of e-mail retains everything on the server and keeps track of what has been read, responded to and deleted and so it does not matter what number of devices you use to access your email. Each time the device accesses your email account it updates that device to match all of the others.

Unable to Send Email

A further common email issue is that you are unable to send a message even if there isn't a connection problem. You are attempting to send email, but find that it continues to remain in your outbox. This typically is a application problem, the result of otherwise unapparent damage or corruption to one or more messages. To tackle this difficulty, first copy any unsent messages as text. Next save them on the computer's hard disk or a back-up storage medium. After all messages have been saved, highlight all the messages in your outbox and click on "delete" or "clear". After clearing your outbox, start over. Close and restart your email client. Then just copy unsent messages from the text files, paste them into new email messages and resend.

Missing Attachment

A fourth prevalent problem is that the email is missing an attachment or the attachment will not open. A particularly handy feature of e-mail is the ability to receive and send attachments. At the same time, attachments can be real headaches. A frequent inconvenience is to receive an e-mail message that refers to an attachment, but then discover there is nothing there. Often the solution is to ask that the email sender try again, since it is not unusual for the writer to refer to an attachment, but then forget to attach it. Even when this is not the issue, your request might prompt the sender to re-think the attachment's format before transmitting again. If the difficulty continues, consider asking the sender to paste the contents inside an e mail message and try again. This may disrupt formatting, but can be a good way to circumvent attachment hassles.

If you notice a message that the attachment has been deleted, it may be that your anti-virus application has identified a virus, and you're better off without it anyway. But if you find that all attachments are accidentally being deleted, take a look at your mail properties. If a box is checked that blocks all attachments, remove the check mark to be able to receive attachments. If you then receive a message from an unknown person, or if the message or attachment looks suspect, delete the message without opening the attachment.

Another issue is to see that an attachment has been transmitted, but discover that you simply can't open it. The causes (and thus the solutions) differ. In some cases, the problem actually is that the software program used by the sender does not match that of the receiver. As with a missing attachment, an easy fix is to ask the sender to copy and paste the contents of the attachment within a follow up email message. Even if formatting is disrupted, you can still get the essence of the information. You can also use your own copying and pasting process to reformat the contents, if that is critical.

A further strategy is to save the document to your hard drive, and then open the software program that was used originally to generate it. Once this program is in use, your computer may be able to recognize what had been the attachment, and open it. If you don't have the appropriate software loaded on your computer, you may be able to download it via the internet.

Download Issues

A last frequent e-mail issue is that you have too much inbound mail or can not download what you have. If you are receiving large volumes of email, you may be vulnerable to several difficulties.

A number of Internet service providers place restrictions on the level of storage provided to each user (although many have greatly increased storage limits). If a pre-set limit is reached (perhaps because you've gone too long with out downloading your e-mail, or have been deluged by Unsolicited mail or even a virus induced flood of mail messages), additional messages could be bounced back to those who sent them.

Needless to say the direct approach is to download your mail and then weed it out, but a wiser move could be to access your e-mail account via Web mail. That way you can see a listing of all messages and quickly delete any that do not appear to be of interest. The end result is the same, but this step can save a large amount of downloading time. Plus it adds an additional measure of virus protection. Because you're deleting messages from your ISP's server before they ever have a chance to infect your computer, it's like killing mosquitoes before they bite you - instead of later.

Should you not have a Web mail account, it's simple to get one. Go to a provider like Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and register. Then when you go to the site and enter you e-mail address and password, you will see a listing of all incoming mail, which you can read and then retain for downloading, or delete, as you choose.

A similar challenge may be caused by unusually large messages. In the worst cases, you may find yourself unable to receive additional e-mail, because the connection with the server where your messages are stored is disengaged whenever a time limit has been reached.

Using Web mail can do the trick here. Just log on to the third-party site, peruse the list of messages in your inbox, and select the one that is the largest (most Web mail programs automatically list the size of each message). If the message appears of possible interest, open and read it, and then delete it. Or if it is clearly junk e-mail or something in which you don't have any interest, you can delete the message without even bothering to read it. Once you have removed the offending message, your other incoming mail will no longer be blocked.

Should you not have Web mail, an option is to speak to your Isp and request help. Once a customer service representative removes the offending message from the ISP's server, you can then download all remaining messages.

Please remember that saving excessive e mail can be an organizational problem, if not a technical one. Take time to delete email that really does not need to be saved for future reference. Allowing too many messages to accumulate wastes storage space and also makes it tougher to find significant messages if you need to refer to them. For messages that merit retention, create a series of folders so that they can be readily located, and so that your inbox won't become too full. email, email problems, e-mail problems, web mail