Mail isn't arriving

If someone says they emailed you and it never showed up, work through these in order. The first two explain most cases.

Start here

Before anything else, search your whole mailbox rather than scanning the inbox. Search covers every folder, including Spam and Trash, so it finds mail that arrived but was moved.

1. Search for the sender: Type the sender's address in the search box — for example from:someone@example.com. See Searching your mail.
2. Check All Mail: All Mail shows everything except Spam and Trash. If the message is there, it arrived and something moved it out of the inbox.
3. Send yourself a test: Email the mailbox from an outside address. If the test arrives, the mailbox is working and the problem is specific to that sender or message.

Check Spam

Open the Spam folder. If the message is there, select it and choose Unmark as spam to move it back to your inbox.

Check your filters

A filter runs on mail as it arrives, and it can move a message out of the inbox before you ever see it. Open Settings → Filters and read what each one does. These actions all hide mail:

• Skip the inbox — the message arrives but never appears in the inbox. Look in All Mail.
• Move to a folder — it's in that folder instead.
• Delete it — it goes straight to Trash. This is the one that looks most like mail never arriving.

Edit or delete the filter to stop it, then move the messages back. See Filters.

Check where an alias delivers

If the address people are writing to is an alias, the mail arrives in the mailbox that alias points at — it has no inbox of its own. Open Settings → Aliases to see which mailbox each alias delivers into, and check there. See Aliases.

Check the domain is set up

If nothing is arriving for anyone on your domain, the problem is usually DNS rather than any one message. Mail only reaches NevTan Mail once your MX records point here.

• A new domain whose records were never published, or published with a typo.
• Old MX records left in place from a previous provider, so mail still goes there.
• A DNS change made recently — it can take up to 72 hours to take effect everywhere.

An admin can check this under Admin → Domains, where each record is compared against what's actually published. See DNS records & email authentication.

Ask the sender what happened

If none of the above explains it, ask whether they received a bounce message. A bounce means the mail was rejected before it reached your mailbox, and the text of it says why — which turns a vague "it never arrived" into something you can act on.

Still stuck? Email us at info@nevtan.com with the sender's address and roughly when they sent it, and we can look at what reached our servers.