Find and fix email delivery issues equally an Part 365 for business admin

  • Article
  • vii minutes to read
  • Applies to:
    Exchange Online

When users report that they aren't receiving e-mail, it can be challenging to determine the cause. You might run through several troubleshooting scenarios in your mind. Is something wrong with Outlook? Is the Function 365 service down? Is there a trouble in the mail service flow or spam filter settings? Or is the problem caused by something that'south outside your control, such as that the sender is on a global block list? Fortunately, Office 365 provides powerful automatic tools that can help you lot place and fix a variety of problems.

Check whether there's a trouble in Outlook or some other e-mail app

If only one user reports having trouble receiving electronic mail, at that place might be a problem in their electronic mail account or their email app. Have the affected user try the following methods before you move on to admin-specific tasks.

Use Outlook on the web to look for missing messages - 5 minutes

If a user is receiving electronic mail in their Outlook on the web mailbox but non on the e-mail app that's installed on their computer, this could betoken that the issue is the user'south figurer or email app. Ask the user to sign in to Outlook on the spider web to verify that their Office 365 email account is working correctly.

Instructions: Sign in to Outlook on the web for business concern

Run Support and Recovery Assistant to prepare Outlook problems or account issues - 10 minutes

If a single user in your organization is having problem receiving email, the cause could be a licensing upshot, a profile problem, the wrong version of Outlook, or a mixture of other issues. Fortunately, the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant finds and helps you fix well-nigh issues that bear on Outlook or Office 365. Equally a first step in troubleshooting email delivery problems for Role 365 for business organisation, we recommend that you download and run Back up and Recovery Assistant on the affected reckoner.

Discover that if yous're experiencing problems that affect Outlook for Mac or are having mobile access issues, you can use the app to check your account settings. However, you take to install the app on a PC. After you sign in to the affected account, the app will check for issues. Users can typically download and run Support and Recovery Assistant without assist from their Function 365 admin.

Allow united states set your issue Download and run Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant

As an Role 365 for business admin, you have access to several tools that can help you investigate why users are not receiving e-mail. The post-obit video provides a brief overview of the tools that are available to you.

The following list of tools is sorted from the simplest and quickest option to the nigh in-depth.

Check Part 365 service health for Exchange Online bug - five minutes

The service wellness page lists the status of Office 365 services and indicates whatever recent service incidents. To check the service wellness, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in through the appropriate link on Where to sign in to Office 365 for business organisation by using your piece of work or schoolhouse account.

  2. Select the app launcher icon in the upper-left corner, and select Admin.

    Tip

    Admin appears only to Office 365 administrators.

    Can't find the app that yous're looking for? From the app launcher, select All apps to see an alphabetical list of the Role 365 apps that are available to you. From in that location, yous can search for a specific app.

  3. Nether Service wellness, go to View the service health.

    Screenshot shows the View the service health option that's selected in the admin center.

If in that location'southward an indication that the ExchangeOnline service is degraded, email delivery might exist delayed for your arrangement, and you can expect that engineers are already working to restore service. Check the service wellness page for progress updates. In this case, you won't have to open a service request considering nosotros'll already be working to resolve the effect.

Run e-mail delivery troubleshooter

Notation

This feature requires a Microsoft 365 administrator business relationship. This feature isn't available for Microsoft 365 Regime, Microsoft 365 operated by 21Vianet, or Microsoft 365 Germany.

You tin can run an automated diagnostic to identify problems that affect email delivery, and find suggested solutions to ready the issues.

Select Diag: Troubleshoot Email Delivery to launch the diagnostic in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Enter the email accost of the sender and recipient in addition to other relevant data, and then select Run Tests.

Screenshot of an automated diagnostic named e-mail delivery troubleshooter.

Utilise message trace for in-depth e-mail delivery troubleshooting - xv minutes

Sometimes, an electronic mail message gets lost in transit, or it tin accept a lot longer than expected for delivery. In such cases, users might wonder what occurred. The message trace feature lets yous follow letters as they pass through your Exchange Online service. Getting detailed information about a specific message lets yous efficiently answer your user's questions, troubleshoot mail menstruation issues, validate policy changes, and forestall y'all from haviineeding to contact technical support for assistance.

Open the bulletin trace tool

If you're an Office 365 Midsize Business organization, Office 365 Business, or Office 365 Enterprise admin, you access and run the message trace tool through the Exchange admin center. To get there, practise the following:

  1. Sign in through the advisable link on Where to sign in to Role 365 for business by using your work or school account.

  2. Select the app launcher icon in the upper-left corner, and select Admin.

    Tip

    Admin appears merely to Office 365 administrators.

    Can't find the app that y'all're looking for? From the app launcher, select All apps to see an alphabetical list of the Function 365 apps that are available to you lot. From there, yous can search for a specific app.

  3. Go to Exchange.

    Screenshot of the admin center with Exchange selected.

  4. Nether mail menstruation, become to bulletin trace.

If you lot're an Office 365 Small Business organisation admin, practice the following to find bulletin trace:

  1. Go to Admin > Service settings > Email, calendar, and contacts.

  2. Under Email troubleshooting, select Troubleshoot message delivery.

Run a message trace and view commitment details of messages that were sent in the past week

By default, bulletin trace is set to search for all letters that were sent or received by your organisation in the past 48 hours. You can select Search at the bottom of the folio to generate this report. This report tin can requite you a general idea near what's occurring to the post menses in your arrangement. However, to troubleshoot a specific user'south mail delivery upshot, you'll want to first telescopic the message trace results for that user's mailbox inside the time frame in which they expected to receive the bulletin.

Screenshot shows the options available in message trace.

  1. On the Engagement range menu, select a date range that'south closest to the fourth dimension at which the missing bulletin was sent.

  2. Employ Add sender and Add recipient to add one or more senders or recipients, respectively.

  3. Select Search to run the message trace.

  4. The message trace results page shows all the messages that lucifer the criteria that y'all selected. Typical messages are marked Delivered in the STATUS cavalcade.

    Screenshot shows an example of message trace results.

  5. To see details about a bulletin, select the message, and then select ( Details).

  6. Details appear together with an explanation of what occurred to the bulletin. To fix the outcome, follow the instructions in the How to fix information technology section.

    Screenshot of the message trace details page showing an example of what message trace details look like.

To search for a different message, select the Articulate button on the message trace folio, and so specify new search criteria.

View the results of a bulletin trace that'due south more than than seven days one-time

Bulletin traces for items more than vii days erstwhile are available simply as a downloadable .csv file. Because information about older messages is stored in a different database, bulletin traces for older messages can take upwards to an hour. To download the .csv file, do one of the following.

  • Select the link inside the email notification that's sent when the trace is completed.

  • To view a listing of traces that were run for items that are more than seven days old, select View pending or completed traces in the message trace tool.

    Screenshot of the message trace tool that has a cursor hovering over the View pending or completed traces link.

    In the resulting UI, the list of traces is sorted based on the date and time that they were submitted, starting at the most recent submissions.

    When you select a specific message trace, additional data appears in the right pane. Depending on what search criteria you specified, this may include details such as the appointment range for which the trace was run, and the sender and intended recipients of the message.

Note

Message traces that comprise data that's more than seven days old are automatically deleted. They cannot be manually deleted.

Common questions almost message tracing

After a message is sent, how long before a bulletin trace tin can pick it up?

Bulletin trace information can announced as soon as 10 minutes after a message is sent, or it tin take up to 1 hour.

Why am I getting a time-out mistake when I run a bulletin trace?

The search is probably taking likewise long. Try simplifying your search criteria.

Why is my message taking and then long to make it at its destination?

Possible causes include the post-obit:

  • The intended destination isn't responsive. This is the near likely scenario.

  • A large message takes a long time to procedure.

  • Latency in the service is causing delays.

  • The bulletin was blocked by the filtering service.