Did my email send or not??

July 10, 2018 6:59 AM

I sent an email 20 hours ago and the sent window has a message, but not the inbox.

I'm using gmail and sent an email to an address yesterday. I haven't received any message in my inbox saying there was any problem, but weirdly enough when I check my sent folder, there is a little message by the email that says "delivery has failed to the following recipients... and then lists an entirely different email that I did NOT send it to. What is going on?

posted by fantasticness to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Without seeing the email headers, I'd guess the person you are sending to has auto-forwarded email to the address you sent to to a 2nd address, and that address has failed.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:14 AM on July 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Go through your email client settings, it's possible your account has been modified to cc/bcc or forward email to a third party account without your knowledge.
posted by TheAdamist at 8:21 AM on July 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: No that email address is a business email associated with the recipient.. I just didn't use that email. I used another one. So I don't know if I sent it and he didn't receive it at all, or if he received it but had a second email set up (like DarlingBri says) that didn't get it. What's weird is I didn't get a mailer demon. This weird message is only viewable in my sent folder... AND only viewable before I click on the email in the sent folder. Not sure how gmail is working here.
posted by fantasticness at 2:00 PM on July 10, 2018

I don't think it's a case of forwarding, because I believe someone's forwarding info would be private information not available to you as the sender (and not even available to that particular Gmail transaction, whose job was to send the email to address x and that's the end of it - if it gets forwarded to address y, that's separate).

Is it possible you started typing the recipient's name and it auto-completed as their business address and you just didn't notice? Are you 100% positive you sent it to their non-business address?
posted by sunflower16 at 3:28 AM on July 12, 2018