Problems sending PN email to Gmail addresses

[#1]

It would be enormously  useful to hear from any other Plusnet customers what's happening with them

While I don't routinely use my ...plus.com email, I have been sending occasional test messages during this issue.

Having just sent a test message , I can confirm that it arrived instantly.

[#2]

Thanks @MisterW .

From past experience,I'd suggest that you and any other PN friends helping  to monitor email deliveries to Gmail addresses try to vary the time of day when you send test messages. There have been times (though perhaps not now?) when weekday afternoons and evenings (UK time) have been worse than mornings and weekends.

[#3]

I am trying to send a message from my PlusNet address to a gmail address and get a message saying the email cannot be delivered because the email address is not valid. I have double checked spelling etc and it is correct. Not sure what could be wrong. 

[#4]

@Townman
It’s quite a while now since I’ve had any delays or other problems sending emails from my @account.plus.net account to Gmail recipients. All recent messages have been delivered instantly. Are the relevant PN staff finding the same? I don’t want anyone to jump the gun because reliability is all important, but one day, hopefully, will there come a time when Plusnet can officially declare this problem “Fixed”?

[#5]

I have not seen any recent updates.

[#6]

So where do we go from here, @Townman?I absolutely understand that Superusers aren’t superhuman (!) and are not on the PN staff, but you guys are invariably terrifically helpful whenever you can be.
I think this episode highlights a rather regrettable weakness in PN staff’s response to the Gmail issue in the dying days of the PN email service. Just because the problem
Is deemed to be all Google’s fault doesn’t imo entitle the company to wash its hands. The very least PN should be doing is monitoring outcomes and advising customers of what they believe to be the current status. None of this can be Superusers’ responsibility, but I wonder if you could convey this view (from me and anyone else on this forum who’d care to chip in?

[#7]

@Townman @MisterW @plusnettony 

It might be that this problem is reappearing...

Starting a couple of days ago I'm having a 'simple' email conversation with a gmail contact in almost real time (only almost because the contact is 6 hours behind UK time).  So far so, normal.

As an aside to that conversation, yesterday, I started a new conversation with the same gmail contact.  That message had a PDF file attached.  It didn't reach the recipient.  I didn't get a bounce, it just disappeared.

[#8]

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@stuck wrote:

yesterday, I started a new conversation with the same gmail contact.  That message had a PDF file attached.  It didn't reach the recipient.  I didn't get a bounce, it just disappeared.

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Two days ago I sent a message to a gmail contact (with msword files enclosed).  Likewise it didn't get a bounce, it just disappeared.

However.  It also vanished (or was never present) in the Outlook sent-items folder here.

And the address used to send?  A domain name which is registered with Mythic Beasts (and the send goes via their platform also).  So not PN.

I'd put the vanishing e-mail down to the vagaries of Outlook, which these last 1-2 years has had to be 'closed down' via Ctrl+Alt+Del (Task Manager) when it hasn't closed itself properly when the program was exited.

A couple of other e-mails in recent weeks have vanished on send-being-pressed, so had thought this latest one was another of outlook's anomalies.

However given the gmail-addressee factor, am now not so sure.

But there's no PN-related factor, and (apparently) similar issues.

.

[#9]

@Penny & @stuck 

Do you also have a Microsoft email (windows logon) address configured in Outlook?

I have seen occasions where (for some inexplicable reason) the email sent on another account is stored in the sent folder of the above account.  I have not been able to ascertain why this happens, but I suspect some issue with the IMAP server at the time of saving the sent item.  Remember it is not the sending via SMTP which gets the item stored in the IMAP sent folder, that is something the IMAP client does after the item is sent.

Thank you for flagging the issue, for on checking my claims, I have just found two important sent items in my outlook.com folder which were sent from a PN mailbox ... they were though received, they not involving Gmail addressees.

[#10]

@Townman 

No, I only have Plusnet mailboxes (three of them) setup in my Outlook (2016) client and they all use POP3, not IMAP.  That email client is on my Win 10 desktop PC, which  uses a local account, i.e. I do not login to Windows using an MS account.

On my Win 11 laptop I only use the Plusnet webmail client.  That laptop does have Outlook (365) on it and that client does have an MS account set up but I don't use it, i.e. the application is never running, not even in the background.

The email conversation,  between my Plusnet address and a gmail address, which  working as expected has mainly been conducted from my Win 10 desktop PC but some replies were made via the Plusnet webmail client.

The second email conversation, the one with the PDF file attached that disappeared without any bounce, was sent using the Plusnet webmail on my Win 11 laptop.

I will report back when I hear again from my gmail contact.

[#11]

Sooner than expected...

The resend of the message that disappeared was delivered promptly.

I wonder if the problem was the 'time of day it was sent' idea?  I sent the message that disappeared in the evening UK time, meaning it was the middle of the day where it was going (USA).  The resend was sent this morning UK time, meaning it was while most people in the USA were still in bed.

[#12]

@stuck 

That observation would fit with the previous observations from @PeterB1 - but NOT your observation that the SENT item did not appear in the sent items folder.

Placing the item in the sent items folder is an action which happens after the item has been submitted for transmission.  It is not performed by the sending side of the service.  Whatever happened to the item in transit ought not to have impacted placing it in the sent items folder.

I believe that there are only two scenarios where an item will not be placed in the sent items folder...

• The item was not submitted for transmission successfully - that is there was an error event during the attempt to send
• There was an IMAP issue (either locally or remotely) which prevented saving to the sent items folder

The latter has been seen with Thunderbird, where the client has exceeded its local file store quota.

[#13]

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@Townman wrote:

Do you also have a Microsoft email (windows logon) address configured in Outlook?

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I don't think so (something@outlook.com (?)), just standard domain-related e-mail settings and two gmail accounts (one which never worked properly superseded by the most recent gmail account which provides access to Outlook/Microsoft/365 (or whatever it's called)).

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@Townman wrote:

I have just found two important sent items in my outlook.com folder which were sent from a PN mailbox ... they were though received, they not involving Gmail addressees.

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I'd checked all the (five) different sent folders, when the most recent e-mail went missing (stuff files itself randomly at times).

However having read what you wrote above, I looked again at the gmail accounts.

The old (discontinued) one has a   > Sent Items   folder, below RSS Feeds.

The new one, however, didn't appear to have a Sent Items folder (never noticed that before).

So I went looking on duckduckgo.  

YouTube: How to find your sent email folder in Gmail

What appears (visually) on Outlook for that account doesn't match what's on the YT guide, but clicking on its folder > Gmail caused a dropdown which included (1) Sent Mail and (2) Bin [no Deleted Items on the main menu].

Looking at the old (discontinued) gmail account, that one has the same dropdown on > Gmail, *but* also has separate main folders for Deleted Items and   > Sent Items   .  

From the YT guide I couldn't figure out how to cause the main (new) gmail account to display a   > Sent Items  folder on the main dropdown, but at least I know now where it puts sent e-mails   

Oh.  And in the > Gmail - Sent Mail folder were (a) two copies of each of the missing e-mails from weeks ago, and (b) two copies of the lost e-mail from two days back.

So thank you for that.  Mystery partially solved   😎

The 2-days-ago e-mail still didn't arrive with the gmail recipient, however   😕

.

[#14]

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@Penny wrote:

I don't think so (something@outlook.com (?)), just standard domain-related e-mail settings and two gmail accounts (one which never worked properly superseded by the most recent gmail account which provides access to Outlook/Microsoft/365 (or whatever it's called)).

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Hi @Penny 

And therein can lay the confusing devil of detail!

In the email space having an email account and using that email address as an ID for another service can create great confusion.  The following is entirely legitimate albeit not overly practical...

1. Have Gmail address and use that as your email address (actually service ID) wherever
2. Specifically use your gmail email address as the service ID as a Microsoft / Outlook / Windows login id

The above gives rise to an Outlook.com email service having a Gmail address ... which is at least confusing if not totally bonkers!  This becomes very visible when using the free outlook client which will automatically configure the Windows ID account for email ...

... from your description I see that as a fair postulation matching your description.  I initially fell into the beartrap using one of my Plusnet email addresses as my Microsoft account ID.  I bit the bullet and created an Outlook address (alias) for the Microsoft account and changed my windows logon to use that.  Keeping things clearly distinct avoids confusion and ensures that you remain in charge!

[#15]

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@Townman wrote:

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In the email space having an email account and using that email address as an ID for another service can create great confusion.  The following is entirely legitimate albeit not overly practical...

1. Have Gmail address and use that as your email address (actually service ID) wherever
2. Specifically use your gmail email address as the service ID as a Microsoft / Outlook / Windows login id

The above gives rise to an Outlook.com email service having a Gmail address ... which is at least confusing if not totally bonkers! 

... maybe so     but I didn't set it up this way, and my use of MS/Office/365 is gifted, so I'm not about to change any of the settings currently in place that cause it to work 

Delighted though that the mystery of the missing e-mails has finally been solved   

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