I am unable to send emails to Comcast.net. What can cause this?

Ed Wendling wrote:

It appears in my sent mail folder.

This is a fairly reliable indicator that, in fact, your messages are being
delivered to the mail server. Only when Outlook receives the
acknowledgement from the server at the end of the SMTP transaction that the
message has been accepted by the server does Outlook move it from the Outbox
to Sent Items. Your SMTP server is failing to route the message on to the
next hop in the chain. You can prove this to yourself by enabling
diagnostic logging and seeing the completion of the SMTP session.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300479/en-us Your beef, then, is with the
people who run whatever SMTP server your account uses.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

"Brian Tillman" wrote:

Ed Wendling wrote:

It appears in my sent mail folder.

This is a fairly reliable indicator that, in fact, your messages are being
delivered to the mail server. Only when Outlook receives the
acknowledgement from the server at the end of the SMTP transaction that the
message has been accepted by the server does Outlook move it from the Outbox
to Sent Items. Your SMTP server is failing to route the message on to the
next hop in the chain. You can prove this to yourself by enabling
diagnostic logging and seeing the completion of the SMTP session.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300479/en-us Your beef, then, is with the
people who run whatever SMTP server your account uses.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]


Where that appears to breakdown is the fact that I am also running
Thunderbird on my computer - I just installed it yesterday. It uses the same
SMTP server, SMTP.Embarqmail.com, as does MS Outlook and it works just fine.
I will do as you suggest but now you can see where the frustration comes in
on my part. What appears to work correctly is not! Why is something that is
being sent to that server by MS Outlook failing and something being sent to
that same server by Thunderbird working just fine? Hence my frustration.

"Brian Tillman" wrote:

Ed Wendling wrote:

It appears in my sent mail folder.

This is a fairly reliable indicator that, in fact, your messages are being
delivered to the mail server. Only when Outlook receives the
acknowledgement from the server at the end of the SMTP transaction that the
message has been accepted by the server does Outlook move it from the Outbox
to Sent Items. Your SMTP server is failing to route the message on to the
next hop in the chain. You can prove this to yourself by enabling
diagnostic logging and seeing the completion of the SMTP session.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300479/en-us Your beef, then, is with the
people who run whatever SMTP server your account uses.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]


You are correct. I ran logging and the messages for both Comcast and any
other provider are being sent to the Embarq server in identical fashion with
a status of being completed.
I will be on the horn with Embarq in the morning.
By the way, I don't have a beef with anyone. I just had a problem and being
that it is a multi vendor issue, like most are, I was being passed from pilar
to post without anyone taking ownership. You know what that is like I am
sure.
Thanks for the help.

Ed Wendling wrote:

By the way, I don't have a beef with anyone.

I didn't mean to imply I thought you were angry at anyone. Poor word choice
on my part, perhaps.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

"Brian Tillman" wrote:

Ed Wendling wrote:

By the way, I don't have a beef with anyone.

I didn't mean to imply I thought you were angry at anyone. Poor word choice
on my part, perhaps.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]


After informing my Embarq guy this morning about what the log records show,
he said that just proves that the SMTP server is working just fine and the
problem is in all likelihood still in Outlook. Now you can get a sense of my
frustration. I will be calling Embarq later to see if I can chat with a
supervisor. The problem still could be further downstream in that Comcast
could be rejecting these messages but in the meantime, I am screwed.

Ed Wendling wrote:

After informing my Embarq guy this morning about what the log records
show, he said that just proves that the SMTP server is working just
fine and the problem is in all likelihood still in Outlook.

Huh? If his server accepted the message and then is failing to forward it
on, how could that possibly be an Outlook issue? He could at least look in
the server logs to see what happens to the message after the server accepts
it and, perhaps, examine the message data to see if it looks correct as its
on the server.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

"Brian Tillman" wrote:

Ed Wendling wrote:

After informing my Embarq guy this morning about what the log records
show, he said that just proves that the SMTP server is working just
fine and the problem is in all likelihood still in Outlook.

Huh? If his server accepted the message and then is failing to forward it
on, how could that possibly be an Outlook issue? He could at least look in
the server logs to see what happens to the message after the server accepts
it and, perhaps, examine the message data to see if it looks correct as its
on the server.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]


That is the kind of flawed logic I keep running into with them and hence my
frustration. You don't have to be an IT guy to know that if someone receives
something and then it disappears, they somehow lost what they received. duh!

: That is the kind of flawed logic I keep running into with them and hence
my
: frustration. You don't have to be an IT guy to know that if someone
receives
: something and then it disappears, they somehow lost what they received.
duh!

Well, at least you know it's not an Outlook problem if their server is
accepting the email.

"Tom [Pepper] Willett" wrote:


: That is the kind of flawed logic I keep running into with them and hence
my
: frustration. You don't have to be an IT guy to know that if someone
receives
: something and then it disappears, they somehow lost what they received.
duh!

Well, at least you know it's not an Outlook problem if their server is
accepting the email.



YEP!

On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:07:03 -0700, Ed Wendling wrote:

"Brian Tillman" wrote:

Ed Wendling wrote:

After informing my Embarq guy this morning about what the log records
show, he said that just proves that the SMTP server is working just
fine and the problem is in all likelihood still in Outlook.

Huh? If his server accepted the message and then is failing to forward it
on, how could that possibly be an Outlook issue? He could at least look in
the server logs to see what happens to the message after the server accepts
it and, perhaps, examine the message data to see if it looks correct as its
on the server.

That is the kind of flawed logic I keep running into with them and hence my
frustration. You don't have to be an IT guy to know that if someone receives
something and then it disappears, they somehow lost what they received. duh!

Embarq does need to look at their logs; but it may still be disappearing at
the Comcast end. Without detailed logging enabled, my server shows the
following:

| T 20080813 182433 7cc Begin processing job MO00003E from
| T 20080813 182445 7cc Job MO00003E from processed OK.

I know that this is the transaction between Mercury/32 (my MTA) and
'mail.pacbell.net'. My server handed off to ATTIS successfully. What happens
next depends upon ATTIS *and* the gateway mail server for the destination.

The administrator at Embarq should have similar logs to the ones I am
showing; depending upon which application they are using (probably not
Mercury/32).

I know nothing about how MS Outlook works. Pegasus Mail does not show a
Message-ID string for email in the "Copies to self" folder (same as MS
calles, "Sent Items" in Outlook Express; again, don't know about Outlook).

I'd have to Cc: myself, and check the Cc:'d account to get the Message-ID
string. What you would be looking for is something like this:

| Message-ID:

Which I would pass to the Yahoo! Mail administrator, or this:

| Message-ID:

Which I would use to check my own server logs.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum