CHECKING YOUR E-MAIL SERVER WHEN THINGS DON’T WORK - Aug 6th, 2010

This is a way to determine if the e-mail issues that your having are server related or local (entry errors, firewalls, etc.) For those of you new to telnet: (If you’re running Vista, you’ll have to enable telenet services (see below) Windows users in a cmd window (start, run, cmd, enter) type: telnet mail.yourdomain.com 110 (110 is the outgoing email port) and press enter (Mac users you’ll find the telnet screen in a terminal window (Finder, Go, Utilities, Terminal) If an OK is returned, you are logged on to your e-mail server. Now enter: user yourfullemailaddress@yourserver.com and press enter If an OK is returned, You are logged on to your e-mail account. Now enter: pass yourpassword (replacing “yourpassword” with your password) If an OK is returned, You have logged into to your e-mail account. Now enter: list and press enter. You should see a list of the messages that are on the server, if any. Message numbers only. If errors are returned on any of the above steps, type tracert mail.yourdomain.com and press enter You should get a list of the hops that it takes to get a message from your machine to your e-mail server. If any of the hops are listed with an error message, this will help to determine where the issues are.

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