Sometimes it can take time for an email to reach its recipient. Unfortunately, this can be down to many different factors, and several of them are outside our control:
- the sending mail server
- the receiving mail server
- spam filters such as "Greylisting"
- communication between internet service providers
- the email client Microsoft Outlook
Fortunately, you will sometimes receive a notification that may look something like this:
Delivery to the following recipients or groups has been delayed:
This message has not yet been delivered. Further delivery attempts will be made.
The server will attempt to deliver the message within x days, x hours and x minutes. You will be notified if the message cannot be delivered within that time.
In this case, simply wait it out or try resending the same email a little later.
If a message is caught by a spam filter, it needs to pass through the filter before it can be delivered. For "Greylisting" in particular — which we use as standard — the typical delay is 15–60 minutes the first time a sender emails a recipient on our system.
If the message does not arrive at all, we can check the logs to see what happened. In some cases, you may need to contact the administrator of the recipient's mail server to resolve the issue.