Email, Emails Being Missed or Not Arriving
To figure out why emails aren't showing up where you expect them to, or where they are ending up instead, start by checking these settings.
Mail Delivery
The first step in tracking down a missing email is to ensure that all of your mail routing is set up correctly. Please log in to the Electronic Directory Editor (EDE) and check that your mail field is correct. In most cases, it will show one of the following:
- <NetID>@mx.uillinois.edu
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Email is being routed to your Exchange account.
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- <NetID>@g.illinois.edu
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Email is being routed to your Google Apps @ Illinois account.
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- A personal email address
The EDE mail field is the first thing checked for incoming external mail (from senders without @illinois.edu addresses). If you're trying to re-route internal mail, you'll also need a mailbox rule (see below).
Changes to the EDE mail field take up to 4 hours to sync with the mail server, so if you make a change here please be patient.
If you redirect to a non-University address using EDE like this, we will not be able to track what happens to a message afterwards, as the only thing the mail server records is that the message was sent.
For more information on properly setting up forwarding, please see Email, How to set up email forwarding.
Inbox Rules
If messages are staying on the University mail server (EDE mail field is @mx.uillinois.edu or @g.illinois.edu) but you are not finding them where you expect, next check if you have any inbox rules or filtering set up. These can be used to redirect or file away some messages, and may be catching mail you don't expect them to.
If you normally use the desktop client of Outlook, Apple Mail, your smartphone's mail app, or another email application, you should check for the missing email in the web-based version of Exchange. Log in to outlook.office365.com and look for the missing message(s). If it appears in the web app but not in your normal client, then there may be some sort of problem with your email client's connection to the server. Removing the account from your email client and re-adding it can often fix this issue.
Other potential causes
To resolve a possible connection issue, try removing the account from the application (Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.) and re-adding it.
Next up, ensure that the message(s) is not getting flagged as spam.
- If you are missing mail from a specific person or vice versa, make sure you add them to your safe senders list. See: Email, Spam Control, Managing Safe and Block Lists.
- If you have attachments on your message, ensure they are not being blocked. See: Email, Spam Control, Email or attachment disappears.
If you are a student and you are having issues receiving course emails (from your instructors), please check that your preferred email address in UI Self Service (under the Personal Information > Email Addresses tab at https://apps.uillinois.edu/selfservice) is correct. If it is not listed correctly, please see Enterprise, How to change a student's preferred email address.
Still missing email?
If you still cannot find your email(s), you must submit the following information to the Help Desk (consult@illinois.edu or 217-244-7000). We cannot investigate missing emails without this information, so please provide it to the best of your ability.
- Dates/times of the emails missed (as specific as possible)
- Email address of who sent it or where it was sent to
- Subject line (if known)