Checking to see if an email has been received

[idun]

Does anyone know if there is any way to check if an email has been received and opened by the recipient? Thankyou.

 

[Russethouse]

Which email programme do you use ?

In Outlook Express under Tools you can click on Read Receipt ... otherwise I used to have a progam that did this, I'll have a look to see if I can find it.

On the internet I found Spy Pig http://www.spypig.com/ but I've never used it

There is an article here : http://ask-leo.com/can_i_tell_if_email_i_sent_has_been_read_by_the_recipient.html

Hope that helps

[HoneySuckleDreams]

yes and no.

it depends on your and your recipients email system.

Microsoft Outlook allows you to send emails with an option to ask for a receipt. In fact, if I remember, it allows you to ask for two receipts, one for delivery and one for opening. But, on some systems it will ask the recipient "sender is asking for a receipt, do you want to send one" or something like that and they don't have to comply.

Not all webmail systems allow for this sort of functionality.

[idun]

A friend has been trying to send some important information and the recipient is saying that they haven't received it. I'm sure that sometimes things don't get through, but they were wondering if they could check. However, sounds like 'now' is too late.

 

Thanks for the info and I'll pass it on and maybe they will be able to check when they send it all through again.

[NormanH]

Sometimes an email goes into the 'spam' filtre and so you don't see it.

It is always worth checking there to see if it is in  there.

[HoneySuckleDreams]

Norman has a good point

On my Wanadoo account, I found out that on the Webclient their is an "undesirable" folder that was getting quite full with stuff about watches and v!agr@ offers, but I wan't seeing any of it as I was using a windows email client to read my emails. I set the web options to allow everything through and now I use a spam folder on Outlook to trap it all

Worth checking

EDIT

also, a bit more obvious, check that the email addresss is correct. They might be sengding the email to a valid recipient, but just not the one they want to.

[AnOther]

It's actually quite rare for a properly addressed email to fail to reach the recipient.

If there is any doubt about the recipients address then get them to send you an email first then reply to it.

[idun]

Rare it may be, but it happens that emails go missing.

My friend and I had wondered if it had gone into their spam folder and they had simply deleted and so not realised that an email had been sent. OR ofcourse they were lying, which is sometimes what people do, when they do not want to take any action about something that is sent to them.[Www]

[Will]

It's too late for Idun now, but there is a program called msgtag (www.msgtag.com) which notifies you when a message is opened (of course you can't be sure that the receipient has actually read it - you do know it has been received though). You have to have Msgtag activated when you send the message. There is a basic free version, and a paid-for one (which I have used for ages) that is customisable and works with multiple email accounts.

The problem with the receipt in Outloook etc is that the recipient can opt not to send receipts. Msgtag gets round that.

(posted from Norway, where Idun is a make of tomato ketchup)

[sid]

"It happens the emails go missing" - No they don't ! Every time I've had to trace "missing" emails they have in fact been delivered somewhere, maybe not the the right person (because they were wrongly addressed), or they got there but had been filtered out into a rarely checked "spam" or "undesirable" folder or even automatically deleted.  I've seen and heard every excuse under the sun.

Many people use anti-spam filters which they wittingly or unwittingly "mess about" with  and then when the software does as instructed the user looks for someone or something else to blame.

[AnOther]

It's worth mentioning too that your email system will report a truly undelivered or undeliverable email so if you don't get a massage to that effect then you know it has been delivered somewhere.

As an example this is what you get with Yahoo but most systems will respond similarly. Note that it can sometimes take several days for a system to give up and bounce the message back to the sender.

[idun]

If I can assume that when I press 'reply' on an email and do not interfere at all with the addy, then my reply should go back to that person, the original sender..... (not a noreply address incidentally). And yet, I have had friends, who have not received my reply and that is without my receiving any notification that something is wrong and is in my 'sent' folder.

Where these things go, I have no idea.

[AnOther]

If you are responding on that basis and yet the reply is still not getting through, nor are you getting failure messages, then it's almost a dead cert that there is some filtering going on at the recipients end.