Outlook email delivery seems intermittent, only 7 of 10 emails delivered to test recipient

Question

Outlook email delivery seems intermittent, only 7 of 10 emails delivered to test recipient

Todd Cokinos 0

Spectrum internet service; running Outlook client on PC with Microsoft 365; Have both Spectrum and Outlook email configured in the Outlook client.

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Sent 10 test emails from my Outlook/Exchange account in the Outlook client to both my Spectrum email address and my Outlook email address. All 10 came to the Outlook inbox. Only 7 made it to the Spectrum in box. Spectrum verified all their servers are up and running, and my settings were correct. All testing on the Spectrum side was working fine for multiple emails.

Is there some way to trace or get error logs for these undelivered emails from the Microsoft Outlook side of things? I get no failed delivery notices (these don't seem to occur much these days).

Has anyone seen any intermittent delivery issues out of the Microsoft 365 servers? 70% of deliveries within a 2 minute window is not a good result for me, but I don't know where to start tracking down the failures.

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2 answers

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Answer 1

@Todd Cokinos said

Is there some way to trace or get error logs for these undelivered emails from the Microsoft Outlook side of things?

Depends.

If you have a MS 365 Business plan, where you have access to the Exchange Admin panel for your account, please advise and we'll talk about Exchange Online Message Trace.

If not, Classic Outlook Advanced Logging only traces the message to the point where it's accepted by the Microsoft SMTP server. And your Spectrum problem is obviously downstream from there.

get no failed delivery notices (these don't seem to occur much these days).

You should be getting NDRs IF the Spectrum SMTP server rejects the mail. But if Spectrum initially accepts the message and only later filters, quarantines, or otherwise loses it, you don't get anything back.

from my Outlook/Exchange account

1 -- Again, do you have a MS 365 work/business plan that includes an Exchange Online mailbox? Or just a personal outlook.com email account?

2 -- Do the missing mails show if you look directly at the server using Spectrum Web Mail?

3 -- Same if you send from your Outlook account using Outlook Web? https://outlook.cloud.microsoft/

Answer 2

Chloe-V 15,240 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @Todd Cokinos

Thank you for providing the detailed test results.

Could you please confirm whether the sending account is a Microsoft 365 Business/Exchange Online account managed by an organization, or a personal Outlook.com account?

This will help us determine whether Message Trace is available to check the delivery status of the missing emails.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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