Diagnosing Problems

Diagnosing Email Problems

Need help diagnosing problems with your email? We discuss some of the more common problems below, along with potential fixes. If you are a Net Maintain customer and still can’t sort out the problem contact us for help.

Problems Receiving Email
Please Note: These settings only apply to the basic POP email accounts and not premium nMail accounts. For nMail settings please use the setup wizard.

The issues likely to prevent you receiving email are limited to:

  • Having the incorrect username or password. This will prevent you logging-in to the mail server.
  • Having the incorrect incoming mail server (POP3) address. This is normally in the format mail.yourdomain.com.au.

Email Problems

Please Note: IMAP configuration is not supported for legacy POP email accounts.

Problems Sending Email
Please Note: These settings only apply to the basic POP email accounts and not premium nMail accounts. For nMail settings please use the setup wizard.

There can be numerous reasons why you may be experiencing problems with sending messages. Some of these can be due to external factors such as intermittent connectivity, network and ISP outages.

Some of the other things to check are:

  • Make sure you do not have any messages stuck in your outbox. Sometimes a message can get stuck in your outbox and deleting it will clear the blockage allowing other messages to be sent and/or received.
  • Your outgoing mail server (SMTP) settings may be wrong. For the basic POP mail service the outgoing mail server in your email program should be set to use the outgoing mail server of your ISP e.g. mail.bigpond.com (Please Note: this is only for POP mail accounts and does not apply to premium nMail accounts). This setting can usually be found by going to the account settings in your email program and selecting ‘edit’ or ‘change’ for the specific mailbox that is causing problems. See below.

Email Configuration

Please Note: IMAP configuration is not supported for legacy POP email accounts.

Email Account Over Quota Notification
Please Note: These settings only apply to the basic POP email accounts and not premium nMail accounts. For nMail settings please use the setup wizard.

If you have received an email notification that your mailbox is exceeding its allowed quota the problem could be:

  • Your email program is incorrectly configured and is leaving copies of messages on the server after you have collected them. In your email program account settings for the mailbox concerned you should have ‘Leave a copy of messages on the server’ unticked. See below.
  • You may be relying solely on webmail access and failing to delete email after it is read. (To free up space delete messages no longer required and empty your deleted items folder or trash bin.)
  • You have mail being redirected to another address and are not clearing the forwarding mailbox. (Periodically delete the messages in the forwarding mailbox and empty your deleted items folder or trash bin.)
  • You have been sent a lot of messages containing very large attachments in a short time frame. (Save the attachments to your computer and delete the messages to free up space and empty your deleted items folder or trash bin.)
  • You have been the victim of a spam bomb. (Delete the spam messages and empty your deleted items folder.)

Incorrect Email ConfigurationPlease Note: IMAP configuration is not supported for legacy POP email accounts.