help me with my gmail problems
September 10, 2007 5:08 PM Subscribe
I'd never had any trouble with Gmail before (I think), but now that I'm taking some online courses, I'm having some problems.
I'm not getting some of the tutors' emails and a friend tells me she's had to send emails with attachments several times before they go through. (Not big attachments, usually small Word files.) Also, I sent myself an email from my gmail adress to a secondary address and it never got there. Any ideas of what may be happening?
The only thing I can come up with that has changed is that I had two other email addresses redirected to my main address, but I'm not really sure if those can affect it, so it's just a thought.
I'm not getting some of the tutors' emails and a friend tells me she's had to send emails with attachments several times before they go through. (Not big attachments, usually small Word files.) Also, I sent myself an email from my gmail adress to a secondary address and it never got there. Any ideas of what may be happening?
The only thing I can come up with that has changed is that I had two other email addresses redirected to my main address, but I'm not really sure if those can affect it, so it's just a thought.
I can only sympathize with you. All of my gmail emails that I send to my brother go into his email trash bin. So he looks for them. Sometimes his goes into my trash bin, but rarely.
It is just a weird problem. I do have his address in my address book and he has mine but still they go astray at times.
I have never found a solution.
posted by JayRwv at 5:36 PM on September 10, 2007
It is just a weird problem. I do have his address in my address book and he has mine but still they go astray at times.
I have never found a solution.
posted by JayRwv at 5:36 PM on September 10, 2007
Response by poster: I log on to Gmail through the web, or sometimes through Gtalk and I just click on the number on the bottom that shows the amount of new messages.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 5:39 PM on September 10, 2007
posted by CrazyLemonade at 5:39 PM on September 10, 2007
Check your spam folder. In my experience, Gmail misclassifies non-spam as spam less often than any other filtered service, but it does still happen occasionally.
If a mail you want turns up in Gmail's spam folder, there's a button you can click to tell Gmail it isn't spam. If you persist with this, it should eventually learn not to discard stuff you want.
As for why your Gmail occasionally doesn't get through to other people: some pointy-haired corporate mail providers automatically discard mail that comes from public email services like Hotmail and Gmail, apparently in an effort to stop people using their work email address for personal correspondence. Yes, this is dumb.
Apart from spam-filter-related issues, the only thing I've ever had trouble with in Gmail is sending attachments: sometimes they don't upload properly. If I connect to Gmail via https://mail.google.com/ instead of http://mail.google.com/, attachment uploads always work.
posted by flabdablet at 6:35 PM on September 10, 2007
If a mail you want turns up in Gmail's spam folder, there's a button you can click to tell Gmail it isn't spam. If you persist with this, it should eventually learn not to discard stuff you want.
As for why your Gmail occasionally doesn't get through to other people: some pointy-haired corporate mail providers automatically discard mail that comes from public email services like Hotmail and Gmail, apparently in an effort to stop people using their work email address for personal correspondence. Yes, this is dumb.
Apart from spam-filter-related issues, the only thing I've ever had trouble with in Gmail is sending attachments: sometimes they don't upload properly. If I connect to Gmail via https://mail.google.com/ instead of http://mail.google.com/, attachment uploads always work.
posted by flabdablet at 6:35 PM on September 10, 2007
Best answer: I bet that a couple scenarios are causing them to be kicked to spamville (or simply not deliverable to you @ all)
1. He/she uses HTML inline in his/her mails
2. He/she isn't using a university email address...using hotmail or yahoo or something instead.
3. He/she has a footer/signature, probably one using html and/or a picture
4. He/she is attaching "urgent" flags and/or "read receipts" to messages.
It could not be arriving at all...if that's the case, then the school IT department is, for some reason, blocking the IP/domain of your particular gmail server, or just all of them.
posted by TomMelee at 8:09 PM on September 10, 2007
1. He/she uses HTML inline in his/her mails
2. He/she isn't using a university email address...using hotmail or yahoo or something instead.
3. He/she has a footer/signature, probably one using html and/or a picture
4. He/she is attaching "urgent" flags and/or "read receipts" to messages.
It could not be arriving at all...if that's the case, then the school IT department is, for some reason, blocking the IP/domain of your particular gmail server, or just all of them.
posted by TomMelee at 8:09 PM on September 10, 2007
All my Gmail problems started when I activated the auto-forwarding feature. After a month of ripping my hair out, I stopped forwarding...and everything went back to normal. Good luck.
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:45 PM on September 10, 2007
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:45 PM on September 10, 2007
Roger, just to be clear: you're talking about making Gmail auto-forward stuff to somewhere else, yes? Not setting up some other provider to auto-forwarding another address to Gmail?
Because I can't see how setting up, say, an ISP mail server to auto-forward to Gmail is going to affect the delivery of any mail sent directly to or from Gmail itself.
posted by flabdablet at 5:35 AM on September 11, 2007
Because I can't see how setting up, say, an ISP mail server to auto-forward to Gmail is going to affect the delivery of any mail sent directly to or from Gmail itself.
posted by flabdablet at 5:35 AM on September 11, 2007
I had my professional Gmail account (real.name@gmail.com) forwarding to my personal Gmail account (wacky.name@gmail.com). One of my contacts had an auto-responder for his Blackberry, and every time I emailed him from my professional account, some sort of infinite loop was created that blocked all subsequent email from reaching that Inbox. The problem disappeared when I turned off the forwarding feature.
I only mentioned it because CrazyLemonade has two other accounts forwarding to Gmail...
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:39 AM on September 11, 2007
I only mentioned it because CrazyLemonade has two other accounts forwarding to Gmail...
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:39 AM on September 11, 2007
Response by poster: Thanks roger. I already stopped the email from my school account from being forwarded to my primary gmail account.
I also emailed one of the professors of the online courses saying that if he uses a signature with HTML, this could prevent the message from being delivered to all the students.
If anyone has some more ideas, please let me know.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 1:34 PM on September 11, 2007
I also emailed one of the professors of the online courses saying that if he uses a signature with HTML, this could prevent the message from being delivered to all the students.
If anyone has some more ideas, please let me know.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 1:34 PM on September 11, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by chrisamiller at 5:21 PM on September 10, 2007