/ I can receive emails, but cannot reply or send emails. Help?

I can receive emails, but cannot reply or send emails. Help?

Troubleshooting Email Send Errors Celeste Stewart

The first step in troubleshooting email send and reply errors is to determine if the problem is related to the outgoing email settings or if it has something to do with a “stuck” message. If your email program has sent messages successfully in the past, it’s more likely that something else is interfering with sending but it doesn’t hurt to double-check the outgoing email settings to be sure that all is well.

Checking Outgoing Email Settings

First, check with your ISP to find out exactly how the settings should be set up. In fact, you may need to go into your email client and tweak your settings if you used the email setup wizard to initially set up your account. That’s because the setup wizard covers the basic setup steps and many ISPs have additional requirements. Once you have the information you need (it’s usually available on the ISP’s Web site), open your email client and make the corrections. The steps vary slightly from one application to the next but they’re similar. Using Windows Live Mail as an example, you would go to Tools > Accounts and then click on the email account in the list. Once highlighted, you’d click on Properties and then on the Servers tab.

In the Server Information / Outgoing mail (SMTP) section, check to be sure that the server address matches the server address from your ISP exactly. One misplaced period is enough to cause an email send error. Next, make sure that the Outgoing Mail Server / My server requires authentication section is filled out based on your ISP’s requirements. If your ISP requires authentication, place a check in the box and click Settings. Enter your credentials.

Checking for Stuck Email Messages

If your email previously worked fine, then check your outbox for a stuck message. Every now and then, an email gets stuck in the outbox causing a blockage. If the first email cannot go through, none of the newer messages created can go through either. The original email may be corrupt or simply too large for the ISP to handle. Delete the stuck email and the blockage will be cleared.

Email Error Messages

The above two steps are useful in solving numerous email send problems. However, the possibilities are vast. Is your email application generating an error message? If so, that message could provide us with additional clues. Let us know the email application that you are using along with any error messages and we can dig a little deeper for you.